


a satisfactory world for reasonable people

by spikenard



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (?), Fake/Pretend Relationship, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, TRC exchange 2017
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-02-25 21:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13221549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spikenard/pseuds/spikenard
Summary: When the website had finished loading, Gansey typed in,i think my best friend is gay, and hit enter.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spnheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spnheart/gifts).



> happy holidays and happy new year, @spnheart! sorry this is late, but i hope you enjoy it — the second chapter should be up by wednesday!  
> edit: it is Wildly Blizzardy where i live and that's restricted my internet access - update will come when it comes, sorry! hopefully this weekend.

It started out in the most idiotic and humdrum of ways. 

It wasn't even anything unusual, just an ordinary afternoon, and Gansey had to leave class. 

It was the double period before lunch, and his empty stomach felt hollow. He'd been stricken with the usual sort of anxiety, a bolt out of nowhere shaking him down to the bones.

He put his hand up and asked, his voice as steady and stable as the teacher's heavy desk, whether he might be excused.

His teacher, of course, permitted this. Gansey was an excellent student. He couldn't quite bring himself to understand what she was saying, but he couldn't see any reason for her to protest an early exit, given his grades and academic standing. So Gansey closed his notebook and textbook. He carefully slid them off his desk and into his bag. The teacher was still talking; Gansey looked up, and concern was writ large on her face.

Her last few sentences resolved themselves in his mind. She was asking if he needed to go to the nurse's office.

He put his pen into his pocket and flapped his school bag shut. "No," he said, and smiled reflexively. "I'm quite alright. I just need a little air."

His schoolbag was over his shoulder and he was standing. There were only twenty minutes left in the period, according to the clock above the door.

"The homework is online?" Gansey asked as he shuffled backwards towards the door, and the teacher nodded. Her look of concern was transmuted into what might have been irritation — Gansey wasn't sure — and before he could wonder what was wrong, Ronan was at his side, his grip firm on Gansey's elbow.

"Mister Lynch," the teacher said in a tone of outrage, but before she could finish her next word, Ronan had tugged him through the classroom door and halfway down the hall.

Gansey protested, as he had to.

"Don't skip class for me, Ronan," he said, exhausted. The hallway was quiet, the sunlight watery where it filtered in from the dormer windows above the staircase at the end of the hall. "I'm alright," Gansey added, because it might as well be true.

Gansey's hand was white-knuckled on his bag's shoulder strap. Ronan was still pulling Gansey by his elbow, on the same side; Gansey felt like half of his body was doing the chicken dance. He jerked his arm so Ronan had to let go, and shoved his other hand into his pocket, kept his elbows close to his torso.

Ronan hadn’t said anything. Gansey ventured a tentative glance at him. He was frowning, but not dangerously. He rolled his eyes. 

“Come on,” Ronan said. 

###

He didn’t pull Gansey along bodily, at least — just stalked off and expected Gansey to follow. Gansey trailed after him, meek as a lamb. His brain was still clouded. 

They wandered down a flight of stairs and then ventured onto the second floor. Gansey didn’t look into the room where he knew Adam had BC this period, just trudged after Ronan, but Ronan stopped just past that classroom. He looked at Gansey and tipped his head. 

Gansey blinked at him. Ronan huffed a sigh, but it was his usual impatient noise. Something briefly glittered in Ronan’s hand, and then he twisted a doorknob — Gansey hadn’t even registered the presence of a door in this hallway — and kicked the base of the door. It sprang open, and Ronan held the door open wide.

There was nothing in the room. It was a closet — perhaps a janitorial closet. Some upright mechanical barrel was tucked into a corner, performing some arcane function, or perhaps simply obsolete and resting there. Gansey couldn’t be sure. He just stared, eyes as blank as the rest of his head. 

“After you,” Ronan growled and made an impatient gesture at Gansey. 

Obligingly, Gansey entered. Ronan followed him, pulling the door shut behind himself. The light blinked out completely and left the two of them in the dark. 

The shock of it made Gansey reel. He let out a helpless gasp and dropped his bag, which thumped onto the ground next to his feet. Dizzied, he wondered whether Ronan had remembered his backpack or left it in their classroom. He couldn’t remember. 

The dark was pervasive. The room was close and muffled, the air pressing cottony and suffocating down Gansey’s throat. He wheezed for air and brought his hands up to cover his face. His knuckles banged against the metal barrel and burned; it must have been a water heater or something.

“Hey,” Ronan said, alarm ringing in his tone, and Gansey couldn’t handle it. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and stood there, unbreathing. 

“Hey,” Ronan said, and then his hand was groping its way up Gansey’s arm, along his tensed bicep until it landed on his shoulder and squeezed. “Gansey, stay with me, man, what the hell.” 

Gansey didn’t want to worry Ronan. He nodded blankly, before remembering that they were standing in the dark and that Ronan couldn’t see him. He pressed his hands into his eyes harder, until colors started to spark in the darkness behind his eyelids. 

“Are you breathing?” Ronan asked him, and Gansey opened his mouth and did his best. 

By the time he calmed down, Gansey’s forehead was tucked against Ronan’s collarbone and Ronan was, awkwardly, rubbing his back. Gansey couldn’t guess how long it had been, but when he squinted his eyes open, he found he could see. Light was spilling out against the room’s unsteady hardwood floors, from the tiny slit under the door. 

The hallways were sensible linoleum. Gansey wondered why they hadn’t redone the floors in here, too. 

“Sorry,” he said, shakily, and Ronan made a derisive noise, mostly through his nose. His hands stopped hesitantly rubbing between Gansey’s shoulder blades, and then Ronan’s arms were thoroughly around him. 

Ronan squeezed. Gansey found his own hands on Ronan’s sides, and pulled him close. Ronan didn’t let go. 

It was a good hug. Gansey could breathe normally. Ronan’s arms were very strong and he smelled like soap, instead of sweat and booze and cars. 

As Gansey was starting to say “thanks,” the door to the closet jerked open. Ronan stumbled backwards, and nearly fell. 

Gansey caught Ronan — he’d had his arms around him, it wasn’t difficult to hold him a little tighter, stop him from keeling backwards. Ronan swore unsteadily as he rounded on whoever had pulled the door open. Ronan’s hands had jerked away from Gansey the second the door cracked open, so Gansey let go of Ronan, too, as soon as he was certain he wouldn’t fall over.

The sudden glare of light was blinding. Gansey squinted and then blinked, befuddled; he couldn’t make out who was standing in the doorway, except insofar as he could tell there was someone there. He hadn’t worn contacts today — it had been one of those days where the thought of doing that much work made him feel overweening, very aware of the fact that he was nothing like the image of himself, and that he ought to be. 

At some point between leaving class and the door being kicked open, he had taken his glasses off. He found them folded awkwardly in one of his hands, and fumbled them back on. 

He hoped it wasn’t a teacher.

But it wasn’t, of course: it was Henry Cheng. He was listening to Ronan’s cursing him out, but impassively, with the corners of his mouth tucked into a disapproving moue. Ronan added some demonstrative gestures to his tirade. 

Gansey put his hand on Ronan’s arm to calm him, and was startled when Ronan jerked his arm away with what was nearly a snarl. But it stopped Ronan cursing, at least, so Gansey turned to Henry. 

“Can we help you?” he asked, politely, because that question was as good as a dismissal in most cases. He put his hand back on Ronan’s forearm, and Ronan smacked it away, harder — it stung, a little; the skin was going to redden — but Gansey ignored this and put his hand back again. Ronan tried to shake him off, but Gansey just slid his hand up Ronan’s arm to land on his shoulder, instead, so Ronan couldn’t throw him off. The closet wasn’t small enough for Ronan to really pull away — Gansey wanted to keep Ronan close enough that he could haul him back by the sweater if he decided to start swinging. 

Henry’s face was still impassive and disapproving, but he looked like he was hiding a smile. Ronan put his hand on Gansey’s side, maybe to shove him away or to prove something to Henry or just to be contrary, Gansey couldn’t be sure. 

“Not at all,” Henry said, smoothly. “I see you’re busy.” 

Gansey looked at Ronan, whose hands had tightened against the wool of Gansey’s uniform sweater. His fingers were pressing into Gansey’s arm at the elbow, bands of pressure digging into muscle. Gansey squeezed at Ronan’s shoulder, and then moved his hand so it was lightly resting against Ronan’s collarbone, and he took a moment to rub his fingernails against it, scratching just a little: to get Ronan’s attention back, to defuse the fierce scowl he was directing at Henry, to get him to relax a little, to unwind the tension thrumming through Ronan before it could erupt.

When Gansey looked back, Henry’s eyebrows were raised. “Really busy, apparently,” Henry said. He turned away, and then added, over his shoulder, “I’d finish up soon. The period’s almost over, and everyone knows that closet doesn’t lock.” 

Gansey frowned. He had no idea what that had meant. Clearly, layers of subtext were at work here, but Gansey couldn’t plumb them. 

He looked at Ronan, confused but regrouping, and Ronan jerked his gaze away from Gansey’s face. Gansey caught the tail end of an expression he’d never seen on Ronan’s face before, until he realized he had: it was longing as much as it was rage. 

All of Ronan’s expressions had rage simmering underneath the surface, these days, and Gansey still wasn’t quite used to it. 

“Come on,” Ronan said. His voice was gruff. “Let’s go to lunch.”

###

That was supposed to be the end of it. Just a weird moment for Gansey to put out of his head, something he wouldn’t remember without someone else bringing it up — and no one ever would. Ronan wasn’t about to pipe up with a casual _hey remember that time Cheng caught us in a closet and then I got all weird about it_. But Gansey couldn’t put it out of his mind. 

He didn’t consider himself nosy, per se. But Gansey was _curious_ — curious still wasn’t quite the right word, but he liked to understand things. He had spent his whole life wholeheartedly believing in something most outside observers called absurd, tracking down threads of legend and rumor despite the disapproval and disdain of his family and of his academic colleagues. 

He was much better at finding answers in card catalogues and musty fabric-bound books than he was at ferreting out the sort of passive-aggressive self-aggrandizing nonsense that seemed to be at work here — at least without Helen explaining it to him like he was stupid. 

They emerged from the closet, though, and Ronan kicked the door shut behind them. 

“Are we waiting for Adam?” Gansey asked. Ronan was slouching, turning his back towards Gansey, the spikes of his tattoo bristling over the defensive line of his shoulder. 

“Sure,” Ronan bit out before swinging back around to stand next to Gansey. He glanced at his watch — a flashy new-money contraption, all gleaming metal against a dark face. The bones of his wrist stood out against the band. Ronan slid his shoulder blades against the wall, waiting, his hips jutting out at a provocative, provoking angle. His stance was corded with tension, muscles coiled like a bomb about to go off. His uniform tie was off-center, and one side of his collar had come up rumpled. He looked impressively dangerous, all caged menace and sneering mouth. For some reason, Gansey could hardly bear to look at him. 

He cleared his throat, and forced himself to keep looking. “Your tie’s crooked,” he said. 

Ronan gave Gansey an incredulous look: _you know I don’t care about that_ , it said. 

“Here,” Gansey said, “Let me —” and he was reaching up to straighten Ronan’s shirt collar and Ronan’s face had that same expression on it: guarded and longing and furious. Gansey’s hand faltered, briefly, and then he decided he was being ridiculous. Ronan wasn’t pulling away, or losing his temper: he was just making a face. That certainly wasn’t the worst Ronan could do if he didn’t want something; by his standards, that was practically giving express permission.

So Gansey reached up and straightened Ronan’s collar. The fabric was soft. Gansey had to reach around Ronan’s neck to straighten the back of the collar and flip the recalcitrant tip back down. Ronan had gone very still against his hands. 

It was nice to stand this close to someone. Most of Aglionby’s buildings had been erected towards the tail end of the 18th century, and their pre-war construction and historic building status meant they leached heat, even with recent updates — parent-fundraised — to the building’s heating system. That meant everyone except the occasional stubborn northerner spent all winter bundled up in his uniform sweater. Some of the boys from Florida and Texas kept their winter coats on inside, even. But Ronan always threw off heat like a radiator. 

Gansey pressed his hand over Ronan’s collar, and then took a moment, while Ronan was still unmoving and pleasant, to neaten Ronan’s tie, too. 

“You’re choking me,” Ronan grumbled, the knot a full inch and a half away from his throat, so Gansey gave his tie one last tug and tucked it back against Ronan’s chest, smoothing a hand down Ronan’s chest, down the line where his tie must be resting underneath his sweater. 

Ronan was looking at Gansey.

At that point the bell rang. Gansey greeted the noise with rather more relief than he could really justify to himself, and picked up his schoolbag. 

“Do you have your things?” he asked Ronan, who just rolled his eyes. 

Adam was never the first person out of the classroom — he took meticulous notes, carefully recorded all his class assignments, and usually had a last-minute question to ask the teacher on his way out the door. The hallway filled with students: loud and rowdy and hungry. Some of them greeted Gansey, and he nodded back to them without engaging in further conversation.

“We should’ve gone to lunch,” Ronan said, eyeing the throng. “Gotten a table early.”

Gansey didn’t respond, just nudged his knuckles into Ronan’s elbow. Adam was emerging from his classroom, trying to get his textbook into his backpack without walking into anyone. 

“Parrish!” Gansey called. He raised his arm to get Adam’s attention, and Ronan pulled his arm back down, looking faintly hunted. 

Adam paused and blinked over at them before zipping his backpack up.

“Hey,” Adam said. “Don’t you guys have history downstairs?”

“She let us out early,” Gansey said, which wasn’t exactly a lie. Adam’s presence was a relief — there had been something strange about being alone with Ronan, something that made Gansey feel odd and off-kilter. Certainly not _bad_ , just strange, but Ronan was supposed to be familiar. Things shouldn’t be strange with him. 

“Come on,” Gansey said, “I heard it’s grilled cheese day.”

Cheng was tucked into a corner on the first landing, playing at being absorbed in his phone, and Gansey wondered how long he’d been standing there, watching —? Watching what, exactly? Gansey hadn’t been doing anything particularly watchable. 

Ronan made a point of elbowing past him with great prejudice, but Henry just looked up at Gansey and flicked off a mock salute and a mocking smile. Gansey just said, “Cheng,” and felt, once again, like he was missing something obvious.

###

That would have been the end of it. That probably should have been the end of it, if Gansey were capable of letting things go, if it had been a normal lunch. But the dining hall was full up by the time they made it through the lunch line, their usual table overrun with what looked like half the basketball team, and Adam had snagged them one of the cramped three-person tables lining the walls, in one of the school’s hapless attempts to squeeze as much utility as possible out of what was very limited space.

“You haven’t seen Noah, have you?” Adam asked when Gansey brought his tray over. 

“We can grab another chair if he turns up,” Gansey said, sitting down. He’d forgotten to grab a spoon for his soup. He was going to have to go back for one. There was a perfectly usable table in the main dining area that only had a few people at it — they could easily have colonized half of it, but Gansey wasn’t going to ask Adam to move all his things. 

Ronan came over a moment later, slouching into a chair. His lunch tray had two overflowing plates and three cups of water on it. 

“Here,” he said, and dropped a handful of cutlery on Gansey’s tray before Gansey could lecture him on taking more than one cup at a time. Gansey bit his tongue on the lecture in thanks. Ronan smirked. 

Adam had a rumpled notebook open on the table, fixing what looked like math homework while he ate, and Ronan was applying himself to his food with gusto. Gansey picked at his soup and found himself staring blankly into the dining hall over Ronan’s shoulder. 

Cheng’s table was behind Ronan, one of the two long tables tucked into the hall’s bay windows. He was sitting next to Henry Broadway, telling a story that involved a number of improbable, showy hand gestures, and paying no attention to Gansey at all, which he found obscurely reassuring. Ronan kicked Gansey’s ankle under the table — not with the force that meant it was on purpose, but Ronan couldn’t ever keep his feet still and it really was a very small table. 

Then Ronan’s knee pressed against his, and Gansey looked away. He was scooting over to make room for Noah, who had pulled an empty chair over, and was sitting on it backwards between Adam and Ronan. His arms were folded over the chair back and his chin rested on his forearms. Noah’s hair was messier than usual, and he looked as tired and grubby as Gansey felt. 

Adam had tucked himself into the wall, still scribbling at his homework, and Ronan — well, now Ronan’s knee was rubbing against Gansey’s under the table. Gansey probably should have moved his own chair against the wall, like Adam had, but he didn’t. 

“Hey,” Noah said, glumly. Gansey made a vague noise in response, and went back to picking at his grilled cheese. Ronan’s knees were very pointy. One of them was digging into the side of Gansey’s thigh, so he nudged his toes against Ronan’s ankle as revenge.

Noah was leaning the whole side of his face against his arm, now, and _looking_ at him. And at Ronan, maybe. Gansey, flustered, looked away, which meant: back at Cheng’s table.

Henry had finished his story, maybe, or at least wasn’t gesturing anymore, but he was looking over at Gansey, or maybe at Adam, or the back of Ronan’s neck, or at Noah. Gansey wasn’t sure, but he avoided eye contact, and thus noticed that Cheng’s arm was spread out over the back of Henry Broadway’s chair, and that Henry Broadway’s arm was quietly tucked around Cheng’s waist.

That should have been the end of it. It wasn’t, though: Gansey wasn’t an idiot, and he looked away, face burning, wondering why Ronan had clearly understood Henry’s earlier implication so much faster than Gansey himself had.

###

After that, it was all Gansey could think about. It would have been a welcome relief from the sort of tense, spiraling thought patterns he was used to, the ones that wound him up and left him miserable and stupid as he did his best to breathe, except for the fact that it was also an awful thing to think about. It shouldn’t be awful to think about, probably, but it was, and that only made Gansey feel worse. 

Ronan was gay, or: Henry thought he was. Henry also thought Gansey was gay, which should have been easy to brush off — just a misunderstanding — except that Henry thought Gansey and Ronan were gay _together_ , and something about that stuck in Gansey’s craw. 

Probably it was just that Henry knew — or suspected — something about Ronan. Gansey sometimes suspected about Ronan. They’d never talked about it, of course, leaving it with all the other things not up for discussion — Ronan’s father, Ronan’s suicide attempt, Ronan’s drinking — that Gansey knew he shouldn’t talk about. Everything else, he kept bringing up anyway because Ronan was his best friend and Gansey was terrified of losing him, and he couldn’t help it, even though he knew talking about it wouldn’t help.

Maybe it was more of a surprise that they hadn’t ever talked about this, after all. But Gansey wouldn’t know where to start. Not now.

So instead he screeched his chair slightly closer to the wall, pulled his leg away from Ronan’s and stopped pressing his shoe against Ronan’s ankle, and grimly dunked his grilled cheese into his bowl of tomato soup. 

Ronan didn’t react, of course, but when the bell rang for first lunch, they collected their things. Gansey stacked Adam’s empty plate onto his own empty tray while Adam gulped down a cup of water and Ronan left crumpled napkins all over the table.

“Ronan,” Gansey said, exhausted, and Noah did his best to gather all the napkins up. He kept knocking one off the table, bending to pick it up, and dropping all the other ones.

“I’m not taking your tray,” Adam said to Ronan. He had his and Gansey’s trays balanced in one hand against his hip while he wrestled his backpack over one shoulder. Ronan sneered at him. 

Ronan’s tray was still half-full. He hadn’t even touched his second plate of food. 

He was _exhausting_ , wasteful for its own sake. For a brief moment Gansey couldn’t stand Ronan, his stubbornness and his refusal to listen to reason. The way all he ever did was exactly _what he wanted,_ whenever he wanted to do it. 

Noah dropped all the napkins he’d finally managed to collect and disappeared under the table to pick them back up again.

“Just leave it, Noah,” Gansey said. 

###

Gansey didn’t pay attention in class for the rest of the day, and he cut athletics. 

In the winter, Ronan was the only one who played a varsity sport after classes: squash, to go with spring tennis and fall soccer. He hadn’t played soccer this year — of course, no one could have expected him to, so soon after his father died, and then of course there had been his hospitalization in early October. Gansey had been relieved at his return to athletics, if for no other reason than it kept Ronan supervised and busy two hours a day. He wasn’t much of a team player anymore, if he had ever been one. 

Gansey left campus early, though, and went back to Monmouth. Once he got there, he couldn’t remember if he’d offered to give Adam a ride to work after school, and drove back to campus to wait for the school day to end. 

He parked in a visitor spot and went into the library basement to hide; the crew coach was one of the teachers who supervised the various non-varsity activities students could participate in to fulfil their athletics requirement, and he was sure to have noticed Gansey’s absence. 

Gansey had gone home for a reason, though. He didn’t want to do the sort of research he now had to do on the school’s wifi, so he got out his phone and turned off the wifi connection. Signal at Aglionby wasn’t great — most of Henrietta got coverage, but it was always patchy, Aglionby moreso than the rest of Henrietta’s downtown. The mountains stopped most radio stations from reaching Henrietta without the haze of static and patches of cut-out silence, too. 

Gansey was sure it had to do with the ley lines — it couldn’t just be the mountains. Electrical equipment gave out here all the time. Sometimes Gansey wondered, half-despairing, if the Pig might be sensitive to ley energy, if that was why it gave out so often.

He tapped his forefinger on the edge of his phone case and frowned. The internet was taking forever, and all he’d pulled up was the front page to Google. 

He rubbed his thumb over his lower lip. When the website had finished loading, Gansey typed in, _i think my best friend is gay_ , and hit enter.

He didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly. Most of the results were about what he had expected: Yahoo Answers queries with poor grammar, forum threads by heartbroken girls. He stopped scrolling: _When Your Best Friend Tells You He’s Gay_ , published by the Harvard Crimson, back when Gansey’s parents had still been at school there. 

Gansey read it, paralyzed. He read it again, frowning. Then he closed the tab, deleted his internet history, and put his phone away.

###

“Hey,” Adam said, dropping into a chair across the table from Gansey. Gansey jumped. He hadn’t noticed Adam’s approach, or even the end-of-day bell. 

“Noah said you were in the library,” Adam said, and then, awkwardly: “You alright?” 

“I’m fine,” Gansey said. “Just had to look into something,” and cleared his throat. He closed his notebook. “Do you need a ride to work?” 

“Not today,” Adam said. 

“Okay,” Gansey said, and stopped himself from tapping his pen against his notebook. “I was going to go to Monmouth until Ronan’s done.” 

Adam shot Gansey a look like he was being stupid. Gansey ignored it, politely, because he was pretty sure Adam hadn’t intended for him to catch it. 

“Your place is freezing,” Adam said. 

This was true. The library was, at least, temperature controlled.

“I bought space heaters,” Gansey said defensively. “It’s not so bad.” Gansey _had_ bought space heaters, but he wasn’t sure how to leave them on while he was at school without risking a house fire. He didn’t trust Noah to try and help after Noah had blown all the fuses in his room and started a small house fire on the same day last week, trying to put up string lights and then trying to light half a dozen candles. Ronan’s assistance with anything electrical was, of course, out of the question.

“Alright,” Adam said. Gansey didn’t get up from the table. After a few minutes, he opened his notebook again. 

###

By the time the late bell rang a few hours later, Gansey had a plan. 

“I can give you a lift back to yours,” Gansey said, packing his things into his bag. He felt — not _good_ , but better, now that he’d decided on a course of action.

“Thanks,” Adam said. 

This conversation was already ritualized: any alteration to that formula tended to result in a fight. They trudged to the Pig in silence. 

Gansey zipped up his coat and pulled gloves on once they got outside. He wished he’d brought a warmer coat with him, instead of just last year’s letter jacket from crew. Adam just had on his uniform sweater, which couldn’t be warm enough. 

Ronan was leaning against the Pig when they got to the lot. He stood up. 

“Fucking finally,” Ronan said. “I’m freezing my balls off.” 

Gansey, half-hysterically, remembered the article he’d read earlier: _so few people I knew fit the image I had of a gay person. I have since realized that the vast majority of gay people do not fit this image._

Before, Gansey had been performing a thought exercise: what would it mean to him if Ronan were gay? It had been very easy for him to come up with a plan of action, to decide it wouldn’t matter to him because that sort of thing shouldn’t matter. It had almost felt like a joke: leave it to Cheng to come up with some idea like that, and Gansey had just planned for all possible outcomes because that was what Gansey _did_. 

Gansey hadn’t seen Ronan since lunch, and suddenly he was positively, irrevocably certain that Ronan _was_ gay. Something about seeing him in person, vivid and fully three-dimensional, suddenly the only saturated thing in winter’s faded palette, made it impossible for Gansey to think straight. To think clearly. 

Ronan’s eyes were very blue, Gansey thought, stupidly. 

His chapped lips were very red in the winter cold. “Hurry the fuck up,” Ronan said, and Gansey realized he’d been standing thunderstruck and staring at Ronan for God only knew how long. 

“Right,” Gansey said, fumbling for his car keys. “Right. Adam gets shotgun,” Gansey said, in a last fervent grab at self-preservation, so he wouldn’t see Ronan out of the corner of his eye while he had to concentrate on driving. 

They dropped Adam off at the end of the road, not at his house. This interaction, too, had been established as the lesser of many evils; neither Adam nor Gansey was looking for a fight.

That left Gansey alone with Ronan, who had climbed over the folded-down front seat and kneed Gansey in the ear in the process of clambering into shotgun. Gansey shifted the Pig into gear and reversed out of the muddy street, pointing the car back towards Monmouth. 

“Buckle up,” Gansey said, without looking at Ronan. 

Ronan did, but he didn’t say anything, not even when Gansey drove under the speed limit all the way back into town.

“Thought we were going home,” Ronan said, sullenly and out of nowhere, and Gansey came back to himself with a jerk. He’d driven past the turn-off towards Monmouth.

“I thought we could get Nino’s,” Gansey invented wildly. 

Ronan huffed, but didn’t protest, so Gansey took a meandering path towards Nino’s, still thinking furiously. He didn't know how he was going to handle this. He didn’t know if this was the sort of thing he could be expected to handle. 

That thought, at least, was easy for him to put to bed: of course this was the sort of thing he should handle. This was exactly his responsibility: to stop Ronan from running himself off the rails, whatever that entailed. 

Gansey pulled the Pig into the Nino’s lot and parked without making any move to get out of the car, or even to take his hand off the keys once he’d turned the car off. 

“Are we going?” Ronan said, trying hard to sound bored. “Or are you keeping me locked in here indefinitely?” 

“No, of course,” Gansey said, shaking himself. He could hear the strain in Ronan’s voice, and see the relief in Ronan’s posture once they were out of the car. 

Today had been rather a shock for Gansey — in more ways than one — but it must have been far worse for Ronan, if he’d kept this secret for so long. He must not have been ready for Gansey to know, and most likely hoped that Gansey hadn’t worked out what Henry Cheng’s snide hints were supposed to mean. 

Gansey wanted to remind himself that he might be wrong — that there could be some other piece of information he was missing, here, that would explain Ronan’s violent posturing and even more violent self-destruction — but the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Ronan was grimly and devotedly Catholic, which couldn’t be easy, and while he was by no means shy, it also explained a great deal of his arbitrary but strictly-enforced personal boundaries. He changed in front of Gansey with no self-consciousness — as Gansey did in front of him, Gansey thought — and often left the bathroom door open as he went about his day, but when he went into his room to sleep he locked the door and wouldn’t let Gansey in no matter how loudly he banged on the door, even if that meant Ronan didn’t make it to school that day.

Ronan was contrary, and miraculous, and wild; nothing about that could change, even if Gansey sometimes wanted it to. This thought was a comfort. 

He trailed Ronan into the restaurant, where he found him already picking a fight with the waitress. 

“You can’t put in an order with me unless you’re seated in my section,” she said, glaring up at him, her hair bristling behind half a dozen tacky hair-clips.

“We’re not staying,” Ronan snapped. “We’re just getting takeout.” 

“And I just told you,” the waitress said, “I can’t take your order unless you’re seated in my section.” 

“Fucking Christ, lady,” Ronan started, and Gansey cut him off. 

“We can stay,” Gansey said. “A table for two, please,” and then smiled at the waitress, because she looked like she was ready to throttle someone. 

“Over there,” she said, pointing across the seating area to a two-person booth. “Here,” she added, and slapped two menus against Ronan’s chest before heading away from the two of them at great speed.

“What an unpleasant girl,” Gansey said, frowning after her. Ronan gripped the menus firmly and stalked towards the booth. 

Gansey caught him by the elbow; Ronan was walking too fast. But Ronan _reacted_ to Gansey’s hand. Instead of shaking Gansey off, like he usually would, Ronan slowed and pressed his arm back into Gansey’s palm for a split second. 

Gansey wouldn’t have thought much of it, except he was hyper-aware of what it must look like for them to touch. They sat, and Gansey realized why Ronan had permitted a moment of comfort: Cheng’s crew was here, a huge and boisterous table. Cheng was there, and he’d clearly noticed them. 

They sat at their table. Gansey opened his menu, for absolutely no reason; he always got the same thing, here, but he wanted something to do with his hands so he wouldn’t have to look at Ronan across the table. 

He only looked up when someone had come to stand next to their table. Gansey had assumed it was the waitress, but it was Henry Cheng. 

Automatically, without thinking about it, Gansey stepped hard on Ronan’s foot, under the table: _do not get out of your seat_. Gansey didn’t have to look at Ronan’s face to know it must be thunderous. 

“So,” Cheng said, and Gansey was so tired of this, the games where people talked and talked around something instead of just coming out and saying it. Gansey could play those games — he’d grown up with them — but they were exhausting, and he was bad at them, and he didn’t want to, right now. He wanted to get dinner and then go home with Ronan, and figure out how to use his space heaters before school let out for winter break. 

“Did you need something?” Gansey snapped at him. He saw, peripherally, that Ronan hadn’t expected Gansey to react like that. 

Cheng’s demeanor changed. “No,” he said, and his voice wasn’t whatever knowing mockery it had been earlier. He sounded almost sincere. Gansey glared a little harder. He wished he hadn’t worn his glasses; his glare never looked quite as good peering out over top of them. He always felt it made him look matronly. 

Ronan pressed his foot up against the sole of Gansey’s. Gansey wasn’t sure if it was meant to indicate approval or some other message, so he looked at Ronan. 

Looking didn’t help; he still couldn’t tell. Ronan mostly looked nonombative, and surprised about it, like the fight had slipped out of him without his asking it to. 

“Listen,” Cheng said. He was leaning towards them, and he had lowered his voice. “I won’t tell anyone.” 

Gansey was still cross. “Tell anyone what?” he heard himself asking, despite the fact that he knew exactly what Henry could tell people. 

“About your _rendezvous_ third period,” Henry said. He said _rendezvous_ with relish, and what was either quite a good French accent or an atrocious mockery of one; Gansey’s French grade was bad enough that he wouldn’t have been able to guess either way. Henry raised his eyebrows, and lowered his voice yet further. “Or about the fact that I’m interrupting your date.” 

At that, two things happened in rapid succession: Ronan attempted to fling himself out of the booth at Cheng, and Gansey felt the future fall into place with the sort of crystalline clarity he usually associated with more than one consecutive night spent awake in the Pig listening to audio feedback on his homemade EMF recorder. 

Gansey had two options: he could let Ronan fling himself at Cheng in order to prove something, though Gansey was sure Ronan didn’t know what he was trying to prove, or to whom. Or, he could —

Gansey leaned across the table to seize Ronan’s elbow. “Sit _down_ , Ronan,” Gansey said, and hauled on it. Ronan thumped back into his seat as abruptly as he’d risen to leave it Gansey stepped hard on Ronan’s foot, for good measure, and Ronan’s face slid from its snarl right back into bewildered calm. Good. Gansey felt deeply, foundationally certain that this was the correct response, but otherwise he had no idea where he was coming up with this, how he knew what to say. 

“That’s very decent of you,” Gansey said to Henry, while Ronan made a strange croaking noise across the table. 

“Now, if you don’t mind,” he added, when Henry still seemed inclined to linger, and tried to flag down a waitress. It was the girl who’d seated them; she was ignoring Gansey with what seemed like purposeful intensity. 

Cheng didn’t leave. He said: “I’m having a Christmas party at my place.” 

Gansey eyed him. Ronan snorted, derisive, but Gansey was still holding onto his arm. “I’m not sure we’ll be able to make it,” Gansey said. “But thank you for the invitation.” 

Henry grinned, then, bright and surprising. “Yeah,” he said. “I figured. It’s on Saturday, starts whenever enough people show up. Bring Parrish, if you need a cover.” Henry eyed Ronan, and then added, “It’s not a substance kinda party. Don’t spread it around.”

“We’ll consider it,” Gansey said, because it didn’t seem like Cheng was going to leave unless he said at least that much. Henry flashed a peace sign, and half-jogged back to his table, flagging down a waitress on the way and directing her towards their table. 

“What an asshole,” Ronan said. Gansey slid his hand from Ronan’s elbow down to his hand, and then chickened out at the last second. Instead of wrapping his hand around Ronan’s, he just rested his hand on the table next to Ronan’s, and pressed his pinkie against Ronan’s wrist. 

The waitress stopped by their table: a local girl, voice honey-slow as Adam’s. “Gansey,” Ronan said hoarsely. Gansey ignored him, and ordered their usual pie to split.

“ _Gansey,_ ” Ronan said again, as soon as the waitress had left. Gansey finally looked at him. Ronan was leaning across the table, and he was flushed, the blood standing vivid against the thin skin stretched over his cheekbones. His hair was coming in long enough to prickle against Gansey's palm, but Gansey could see that his skull was flushed, too. Ronan’s upper lip was bleeding where he had chewed at it, and Gansey had to fight back the urge to press a paper napkin from the dispenser at the end of the table against the spot of dark red. 

“Yes?” Gansey said. His heart was hammering, but he was sure his voice was as calm and steady as it ever was. 

“Don’t give me that shit,” Ronan said. He was keeping his voice low and awful. Gansey couldn’t tell if Ronan’s fury was directed at him, or — more appallingly — it was possible that Gansey had _hurt_ him somehow, that Gansey had made things worse.

That thought caught the breath in Gansey’s chest, and he had to put his hand to his face to press his glasses up the bridge of his nose, to give himself an excuse to place his hand over his mouth and open it and heave in a huge breath. 

Ronan swore under his breath. “Fuck,” he hissed, and wrapped his hand around Gansey’s wrist. The one that was still on the table. He squeezed, and Gansey breathed in time to the pressure: three seconds on, four seconds off.

Ronan flagged down the waitress. She was much more accommodating than the hostess, for all that she, too, looked rather harried. 

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“We’d actually like that to go,” Ronan said, still squeezing Gansey’s wrist. He fumbled one-handed for his wallet, and slid two twenties out of the billfold. “Here,” Ronan grunted, brandishing them at the waitress. 

She tucked them into her apron pocket and sent them a bright, sugary smile as she went to change their order. 

“I was going to pay,” Gansey said thinly.

“Okay,” Ronan said doubtfully, after a brief pause. Gansey was breathing on his own by then, but Ronan still hadn’t let go of his wrist. 

The hell of it was that Gansey, despite his better judgement, couldn't think what else he should have done. Yes, he had been caught off guard, and yes, he hadn't wanted to rock the boat — the situation had felt delicate and precarious, a toothpick teetering on the rim of a glass. 

Still, that was no excuse; there should always be a correct response, no matter how awkward and delicate the situation. The only thing Gansey had learned at Aglionby so far is that he would never get it right, not when it really mattered.

It was just Ronan's reaction that had fixed Gansey's response. He didn't want Ronan to look like that. He did not want to be something that made Ronan’s life harder. He just hadn’t wanted to seem like he was rejecting Ronan.

Gansey collected himself. Normally that would involve shaking Ronan’s hand off, proving that he didn’t need the support any longer, but he didn’t do that this time..

“You gonna explain anytime soon?” Ronan said, voice low and fierce. Gansey could only hear the strain in his tone because he knew Ronan. He did know Ronan, better than he knew anyone else on the planet. Better than anyone else on the planet knew Ronan. 

The knowledge that this was, and would likely always be, true warmed him, and he turned his wrist — the one Ronan was still gripping quite tightly. Ronan released his hold as soon as he felt Gansey moving. Gansey tried to grab for Ronan’s hand as Ronan was pulling it away, and ended up rubbing his fingertips over the scarred and bumpy strip of pale skin at Ronan’s wrists, his fingernails bumping into Ronan’s leather wristbands. Ronan pulled his hand away with alacrity, and gave Gansey a mistrustful look while rubbing at the wrist Gansey had touched.

Gansey didn’t push it. They were, after all, in public. 

“We can talk when we get home,” Gansey said.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AS YOU CAN SEE, this is now chapter 2/3 rather than chapter 2/2, it may end up being chapter 2/4, i'm not great with keeping things concise. IN ANY CASE, HERE'S MORE! also, note some changes to the fic tags. thanks to @pistolheart AS ALWAYS for letting me crash into her dms with new fic to beta all hours of the goddamn day and night.  
> the article gansey reads in the previous chapter is real; you can find it [here](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1981/2/12/when-your-best-friend-tells-you/?page=1).  
> [here](http://spikenards.tumblr.com/post/169491564744/) is this chapter on tumblr!

Ronan held the pizza box open in his lap while Gansey drove them back to Monmouth. He had scarfed down two and a half slices by the time Gansey pulled out of the lot. The Pig always took forever to start up in the cold. 

Ronan folded a slice in half and held it up to Gansey’s mouth. 

“Stop it,” Gansey said, pulling to a stop at a yellow light. 

Ronan bumped the tip of the slice into Gansey’s cheek, probably leaving sauce on Gansey’s face. Resigned, Gansey craned his neck towards Ronan and opened his mouth to take a bite.

Ronan swooped the slice away, and took a bite out of it himself, smug as anything. 

Gansey huffed a laugh, exasperated, and glanced at the light — still red. 

“Give me that,” he said, making a grab for it, and Ronan held the slice out of the way, up against the Pig’s roof. “Don’t eat in my car,” Gansey said, weakly, a pro forma protest, and snatched himself a slice out of the box, where it was propped open on Ronan’s lap. He ate it while driving, and did his best not to think about Ronan shoving pizza into his face. 

###

They made it inside with most of the pizza gone — they’d left two slices for Noah. Gansey was holding two slices on top of each other as he followed Ronan up the stairs.

“It’s fucking freezing in here,” Ronan said, after he’d slammed through the door. Gansey did his best to close it one-handed, still eating, and then handed his pizza crusts to Ronan for him to finish. 

Ronan popped one into his mouth and bellowed “ _Noah,_ ” to Monmouth at large. The door to Noah’s room blew open a few inches, and then closed again. 

“Be like that,” Ronan said loudly, still with his. “Pizza for you in the fridge,” he called as he went into the bathroom.

Gansey followed him and grabbed a towel. The front door at Monmouth didn’t close properly, and never had; he wadded a towel up to jam against the doorstop, in a vain attempt to prevent more draftiness.

By the time Ronan re-emerged from the bathroom-kitchen-laundry, Gansey had hung towels over most of the window frames, and Noah was sitting cross-legged on Gansey’s bed, sorting through a newly-arrived box full of blankets. 

“What are you doing?” Noah asked, when Gansey pinned a towel into the frame on one of the windows actually set into the wall. “Are we sitting shiva?” 

“What?” Gansey said, climbing up onto the back of the couch to tack a large beach towel up over part of Monmouth’s wall of windows, but Noah just shook his head and wrapped a fuzzy fleece throw over his head, his face poking out of the fluff birdlike and inquisitive. 

Ronan came out of the bathroom fully dressed. He’d been running the shower, and usually that meant he would cross Monmouth’s main room with a towel around his waist or thrown over his shoulder, but today he’d put his clothes back on. 

Was he uncomfortable now, for some reason? 

“Hot water’s busted,” Ronan said, shaking his damp head like a dog. “Better call the plumbers.” 

Was Gansey reading too much into this? Apparently. 

“Scoot,” Ronan said, and flung himself onto Gansey’s bed, next to Noah. Noah shuffled his knees against his chest and hugged them, while Ronan sprawled out over Gansey’s bedspread. 

“You’re fucking freezing,” Ronan complained. “This is the opposite of keeping the bed warm.” 

“The heating should be sorted soon,” Gansey said, eager to keep the peace and, honestly, half-hoping Ronan would drop… whatever had happened today. “And I’ll call the plumbers.” 

There were a few beats of silence. Gansey finished with the windows and climbed off the back of the couch. When he looked at the bed, Ronan looked away. Noah was still curled up under an enormous blanket, determinedly shredding the one edge into a pile of fluff. 

“I’m taking this,” Noah said, then, and collected his handful of fluff into one long-fingered hand. He held the blanket closed at his throat with his other hand and shuffled into his room. 

Gansey followed him. “Do you need a space heater?” Gansey asked, but Noah must have bundled himself straight into bed — his room was fairly bare, not like Gansey’s admittedly somewhat untidy space or Ronan’s junk shop of a room, but there was a large pile of blankets on his bed. Gansey shut the door, and turned, and Ronan had propped himself up on one elbow to look over at Gansey.

Gansey had no idea where he was supposed to sit. Ronan was in his bed.

He must have hesitated long enough for Ronan to notice, because Ronan’s face went from — Gansey could only work this out in retrospect — but his face had been nearly hopeful, uncertain, and Gansey’s hesitation crumpled it back into something sullen and dull. 

Ronan pulled himself out of Gansey’s bed. “Alright, fine,” he said, and Gansey _hated this_. 

“Stop it,” he snapped, which he knew was a bad idea. Escalation never helped, with Ronan, but he was only human, and Ronan was his best friend, and Gansey had no idea what to do with this. There was still the possibility that he’d gotten this all wrong, and that Ronan was angry with him for going along with Henry’s assumption at all. 

“Or _what_ ,” Ronan snarled. Gansey didn’t have an answer for him. Ronan scoffed, like this was the response he’d been expecting. 

“That’s what I thought,” Ronan said. “You don’t have a fucking clue,” and with that, he pushed past Gansey. 

Gansey reached to stop him. He caught the belt loop of Ronan’s uniform pants — he’d left his belt in the bathroom when he showered, probably — but Gansey hung on even when Ronan tried to pull away.

Gansey had no idea what to say. “Don’t,” he said, and then had no idea where to take that sentence, or even if he had a sentence to lose track of in the first place. All he could think to do was hold on to Ronan’s hip. His sweater wasn’t tucked in, and it fell over Gansey’s thumb as he pressed it against Ronan’s hip. 

Ronan’s shoulders were tense and his hands were curled into white-knuckled fists. Gansey couldn’t let go of Ronan’s belt loop — Ronan was still trying to pull away — but he reached out with his other hand, and took Ronan’s wrist in his hand.

He held onto Ronan’s wrist, pressing his fingertips against the meat of Ronan’s thumb until Ronan unclenched his fist by degrees. Gansey could feel himself flushing. He was staring resolutely at the V of Ronan’s sweater. He’d left his tie off, too, when he showered. 

Gansey couldn’t look at their hands, but the more Ronan relaxed his hand, the easier it was for Gansey to press his fingers up against Ronan’s palm, and then against Ronan’s fingers. He held onto Ronan’s hand until he could interlace their fingers properly. 

When he had, he squeezed Ronan’s hand and finally let go of his hip. He could do this. He looked up at Ronan’s face. 

At worst, he had expected rage, Ronan’s usual reaction to most stimuli. Perhaps, at the other extreme, some sort of — Gansey wasn’t quite sure, honestly. An uncomfortable level of emotionality, and having to affirm his own sexuality, somehow. 

Instead, Ronan had pinned him with a look that was equal parts horrified and disgusted. He shook both Gansey’s hand off him, and gave him a contemptuous look as he stalked to his room and slammed the door hard enough that a few parking tickets fluttered to the floor.

###

So that was that, probably. Gansey sighed, and hauled a space heater closer to the extension cord he kept next to his bed, and plugged it in. He made his phone calls —to the plumber, to an electrician, looking into winterizing a little. 

He got his laptop out, and turned the heater up, and did his best to work through his first few homework assignments before turning to his laptop and aimlessly writing an email to Malory, reviewing the most recent data points in his journal. A few hours later, Noah brought the pizza box out to Gansey and sat next to him on the bed, and Gansey ate the last two slices cold. He closed the box when Noah indicated that he didn’t want the crusts, and tossed it on the floor next to his bed; he’d throw it out later. 

Noah put his cold feet on Gansey’s legs as he was wiggling out of his chinos and into his PJs under the covers. Gansey jumped. Noah was freezing; Gansey pushed him out of the bed. 

“You should talk to him,” Noah said.

“There’s nothing to say,” Gansey said, or maybe thought, as he fell asleep.

###

Gansey woke up in the dark. Ronan was standing next to his bed, his hand on Gansey’s bedside lamp. He must have turned it off; Gansey was always falling asleep with it still on.

“Time’s it?” Gansey asked, struggling half-upright and rubbing at his eyes. 

“Go back to sleep,” Ronan said.

“No,” Gansey said, “no, I’m up,” and reached towards Ronan’s arm the way he would have any other day, but Ronan pulled his arm back before Gansey’s hand could connect. Gansey was, briefly, hurt.

“You can’t sleep?” Gansey asked, and Ronan shrugged. Gansey emerged from under his pile of blankets, and swung his feet over the side of the bed. 

Ronan didn’t leave while Gansey got back into his chinos and pulled on a sweater and the winter coat his parents had bought him as an early Christmas present. Gansey didn’t know where Ronan had been planning on going, but he had his own car keys in his hand. 

Ronan just had on a t-shirt and ripped dark jeans. “Here,” Gansey said, grabbing his letter jacket from where he’d left it on one of his bedposts when they got home that afternoon. He tossed it to Ronan. 

Ronan hesitated, and then shrugged it on. It was a little too short for him around the waist, and hung loose on Ronan’s shoulders. 

They left in silence. Ronan drove them to the 24-hour Waffle House in the next town over. Ronan ordered coffee, and that was it; Gansey ordered a plate of waffles and pushed them towards Ronan when the waiter brought them out. 

They ate, still in silence, listening to the waitress and the cook call out to each other. Gansey was half-watching the tv — it was tuned to some news station, but Gansey couldn’t even tell which one, nevermind what the talking heads were discussing.

They paid, a crumpled heap of five dollar bills on the table. Ronan turned to leave, and Gansey felt a sweet, startled jolt at the sight of his name on his jacket, stretched out over Ronan’s shoulders.

###

They got back at about five in the morning. Gansey went back to bed, setting his alarm to go off in a few hours. “Get some sleep,” Gansey said. “The plumber will be by tomorrow. We can shower at school today.”

Ronan grunted, and disappeared into his room, still wearing Gansey’s jacket. 

When Gansey woke up for school, the whole thing felt like a dream, but his letter jacket was missing.

###

Ronan didn’t turn up wearing it, or anything. Gansey wasn’t sure why this was a surprise, but it was.

Ronan breezed out of Monmouth right as Gansey was about to give up on him and just go to school alone. Noah was already in the car. 

Obviously, Ronan was not going to wear Gansey’s letter jacket to school. It was still a disappointment that he hadn’t. Gansey pushed the thought aside, and concentrated on trying and failing to get the Pig started until Ronan smacked the ceiling in frustration and they all piled back out into the December air.

The Pig just wasn’t reliable in the cold, and Adam probably wouldn’t be able to fix it until January. He was getting holiday overtime, picking up as many shifts as possible, from the second exams ended until school picked back up. Gansey felt he was being quite reasonable and understanding about the whole thing, really, even though it meant they would be able to do hardly any exploring while Aglionby was off for the winter. Ronan never wanted to come along unless it was a group excursion.

They took the BMW to school, which meant Ronan was driving, which also meant that the ten minute drive to school took about half that time. Gansey sat in the front seat and rubbed at his lip, pensive, staring out the window instead of at the sharp lines of Ronan’s cheekbones, his wrists and hands.

Adam was already there, by the time Ronan and Gansey piled into their Whelk’s first period Latin class. He looked up when they came in. 

“Hey,” he said, presenting his knuckles. Gansey bumped his own against them. “Can I get a ride to work today? Weather said it looked like it was gonna snow tonight.” 

Ronan slid into a desk, in the row behind Adam. “We took my car,” he said, and then tossed his car keys at Gansey. “You can use it.” 

“Thanks,” Adam said, surprised, as Gansey fumbled the car keys against his chest, trying not to drop them. “Appreciate it.” 

“Boys,” Whelk said from the front of class, annoyed. Gansey slid into the seat next to Ronan’s. Latin was the only class Ronan never slacked off in, but Gansey still ripped a corner off his college-ruled notebook paper.

_Thanks! :)_ he wrote, as small as possible, and added a tiny, entirely unrecognizable depiction of the BMW underneath it. He slid the paper across his desk towards Ronan. 

Ronan took it and put it in his pocket without looking at it, still taking extensive notes. His car keys were a solid metal lump in Gansey’s pocket. 

### 

“Parrish,” Gansey said, in that liminal space and time between classes and classrooms. “By the way. You’re not working this coming Saturday, are you?” 

Adam looked at Gansey, and passed a hand over his face, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Gansey had been delighted to learn that Adam, apparently, let his hair grow over the winter. 

“No,” he said, his forehead wrinkling up in charming concern. “Exams are next week. Got a shift on Sunday afternoon, though.” 

“So you’re free?” Gansey pressed further.

“Gansey, I have to study. I really don’t have time to go exploring—”

“No, no!” Gansey said, hastily, cutting him off. “Of course you do. I wouldn’t take a whole day this close to exams,” Gansey said, reproachfully and a little hurt. He thought Adam knew him better than that by now. 

Of course, for himself, he might have taken a day — he was in no danger of failing any of his classes, or even of doing less than well in them. Gansey’s teachers liked him, and he had always tested well. But Gansey knew how important school was to Adam, and despite their difficulties he did _try_ to be a good friend for Adam, no matter how badly he tended to muck things up. 

“So what is it?” Adam said as they headed to English. 

“There’s a party,” Gansey said. “Henry Cheng invited us. Just for a few hours — then we can drop you off at yours. Or,” Gansey continue with a burst of inspiration, “you can stay over at Monmouth and we could study some, Sunday morning?” 

This was, he felt, a great plan: get Adam to socialize outside of classes for once in his life, get Ronan and Henry Cheng to get along a little by encouraging Henry to continue to believe that Ronan and Gansey were closer than male friends tended to be, possibly engage in some responsible and social drinking, and then a return to Monmouth — Adam in tow — probably Adam would be willing to drive, if Gansey had something to drink at the party? — and then a quiet study date while Ronan went off to church, as he did every Sunday morning. He was quite pleased with the idea, really. 

“You’re actually thinking about going to that?” Ronan blurted out before Adam could reply. 

“Of course,” Gansey said, surprised that Ronan was actually registering a protest out loud. Usually, he and Ronan maintained an unspoken silent _detente_ when it came to things which Gansey considered _for Ronan’s own good_ , in that Ronan’s unwillingness remained for the most part silent and subtextual right up until Gansey began physically dragging him along. “He asked us to come specifically! And he invited you, too, Parrish,” Gansey added, hastily. He didn’t want Adam to think that Gansey was being presumptuous, or that Adam wouldn’t be welcome.

“I’m not going to Cheng’s party,” Ronan said, flatly. “I hate that guy.” 

Adam smiled a bit, and otherwise ignored Ronan’s interjections. “I don’t know,” he said to Gansey, who was attempting to frown Ronan into submission. “I really gotta study. And I don’t know Cheng.”

“Well, you don’t have to,” Gansey said, with great understanding. “But it’d be nice if you came along. Ronan and I will probably be there —”

“I just said,” Ronan said, in a voice that was stepping quite hard on the line between inside and outside voices. “I’m not fucking going.” 

He lowered his voice, then, and said, “You shouldn’t go either. He’s —” and then Gansey tuned him out: mostly because Ronan had resorted to casting aspersions on Henry’s politics, doomed attempts at bringing social change to Aglionby, and personal grooming habits, but also because Gansey realized that Ronan still thought Gansey had no idea what was happening, or that he was fundamentally misunderstanding the situation in some way. Gansey didn't see how; Cheng had called it a date, and Gansey had gone along with it. That seemed fairly hard to misinterpret.

_I shouldn’t have let that conversation go wrong_ , Gansey thought, self-recrimination crunching up his ribs. _I shouldn't have dropped it when I screwed it up_. Ronan thought that Gansey would, what — hate him if he was gay? Feel like the comfort they had offered each other nearly since they’d first met was suddenly inappropriate, or unwanted? Gansey couldn’t be sure. But Ronan thought that Gansey was sufficiently bigoted that it would be an issue, or an Issue. 

Maybe he was offended that Gansey _hadn't_ reacted poorly, in some way. Ronan's reactions to things often didn't make much sense to Gansey; this could be one of those times, and Ronan got so strange about some things like this: about insisting on teaching Gansey to fight, or trying to, his faintly hurt disappointment when Gansey wouldn't let him and Declan beat each other into pulp as a form of fraternal bonding. Well, if Ronan was looking for disapproval, he wasn't going to find it, Gansey thought, determined. 

“He was a really good sport the other day,” Gansey said firmly. “You could show a little reciprocity, Ronan. It’s just one party, and we owe him.” 

Ronan looked, briefly, stunned. He recovered badly, thunking his knuckles hard into the iron banister. Adam looked politely interested in whatever Cheng had done that had left Gansey and Ronan in his debt. 

When no further explanation was forthcoming, Adam spoke. 

“He’s a little,” Adam said, and trailed off, searching for a word. They filed into class. Ronan sat behind Adam and Gansey, either because he could more easily avoid being pestered or because he just didn’t care about English.

“Progressive,” Adam said, finally, and it took Gansey a second to realize he was still talking about Cheng. 

“Well, I’m not saying let’s all go join the Young Democrats or anything,” Gansey replied, automatically and without thinking. Adam huffed a laugh. Declan ran the Young Democrats, with the gimlet-jawed authority of a man thinking of his college applications. Gansey was at least in the yearbook photos as a Young Republican, but he’d never gone to any of the meetings.

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Adam said, which Gansey knew — if he’d taken even half a second to think before replying, his brain would have caught up with his mouth; he knew _exactly_ what Adam had meant — but then Milo came in with graded essays to return and Adam wouldn’t say any more. 

###

Gansey normally sat with Ronan in Euro, too; it wasn’t until lunch — which Gansey ate hurriedly before fleeing to an abandoned instrument practice room in the language and arts building — that he could steal off alone, in order to sit down and order his thoughts. 

He got out one of the slim spare notebooks he kept in his bag, and turned to the third page. He had no idea what kind of header to put at the top of the page. His Glendower journal tended to be centered around a newspaper clipping, or photocopy out of a book, followed by several pages of notes about potential leads to pursue, or theories. Sometimes he organized things by geographic region, or by method of exploration — he had a rather interesting four page spread about dowsing rods, and quite a bit of information about caves. Helen called it his scrapbook.

Finally, Gansey chewed on his pen. At the top of the page, he wrote: RONAN

So Gansey had this to deal with: Ronan was gay, and didn’t seem to want to make friends with Henry Cheng, who was, probably, also gay (?). This didn’t make much sense to Gansey. If he was gay, he’d want to talk to someone who knew what it was like, or what he was going through, or what have you. But then Ronan was, generally, prickly and defensive about even the most innocuous things, and this was certainly not one of those. 

RONAN

  * gay
  * needs support
  * doesn’t like cheng - (gay?)
  * won’t talk to me



Gansey gnawed at the cap of his pen, and started a second column.

ADAM

 

He wasn’t quite sure where to start. Adam was (?) apparently (?) homophobic (??). He certainly didn’t seem to like Cheng much. This was faintly surprising to Gansey, who hadn’t ever noticed Adam being anything but polite, even to students he disliked. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Adam interact with Cheng at all. 

Maybe it was just political? They didn’t talk politics, ever; that wasn’t something Gansey did for fun, with his friends. He got enough of that at home. 

Ronan was strictly anarchistic. Occasionally Ronan went off on a tear about Declan in which Declan’s politics featured, and Adam would contribute the occasional amused hum or snort of laughter. Gansey got the sense that Adam was vaguely right-leaning, in rather the same way he himself was; early on in their friendship, Adam had applied himself to Gansey with a number of highly detailed and specific questions about his mother’s campaign positions that Gansey himself had been entirely unable to answer, at which point Adam had stopped asking and never brought the subject up again. Gansey assumed that this questioning had been less due to a personal interest in politics, and more due to one of Adam’s spontaneous jags of research on something he felt he ought to know, for arcane and neurotic reasons of his own. But perhaps it had been an expression of Adam’s sincere beliefs, somehow. 

It was just a surprise to Gansey that Adam might dislike someone just because he thought they might be gay; something about that felt wrong. Incorrect, not morally wrong; it didn't fit right with the way he saw his friends. 

Gansey wondered if this was what drove some of the tension between Ronan and Adam. He was aware that they did not often spend time together without his own or Noah’s presence as a buffer. He had hoped they were finally starting to get along better — but his focus had been, generally, on getting Ronan to tolerate Adam, rather than the other way around: he would tell Ronan off for making a crack about Adam’s poverty, but Adam sometimes made comments pointed at Ronan which Gansey had never challenged. 

If Gansey had sometimes suspected about Ronan, Adam was clever and observant enough that he must have known for certain. Possibly Noah did, too, but Noah was so rarely mean-spirited that it didn’t particularly matter. But Adam was always making jokes, little half-quips that left Gansey feeling uneasy in ways he couldn’t quite explain.

Gansey stared at his notebook for another few moments. He had no idea what to write down under  ADAM . Should he try and talk to him? Would that make things worse?

Tentatively, Gansey wrote down: _talk to him about being polite to cheng (?)_. That was probably a safe, neutral way of sounding Adam out about the issue, right?

The bell rang for second lunch; Gansey had half an hour until he had to be in his afternoon classes. 

Nothing about this had helped. Gansey got a thick black Sharpie out of his pencil case, and spent a minute methodically blacking out what he had written, on both sides of each page. Then Gansey closed the notebook and shoved it into the very bottom of his bag, underneath his textbooks’ spines, so that it wouldn’t fall out by accident next time he went digging for a pen. 

###

He kept himself busy. He had no idea how to open a conversation with Ronan, and the more time he spent thinking about it, the more he felt chewed up and tender inside, liable to ruin whatever fragile peace he had established with Ronan. All he could think to do was to sit closer to Ronan, sometimes, to touch his arm or his hand or the back of his neck to catch his attention. 

Adam came over to study, most afternoons, or the three of them and Noah would pile into a library study room and Adam and Gansey would study while Ronan and Noah methodically shredded sheets of paper into long curling strands. 

“You should study,” Gansey said half-heartedly when Adam had pushed his chair away from the table to stretch. Gansey’s own back was starting to twinge a bit. 

Gansey looked at Ronan, to try and talk him into at least helping study for Latin — the class in which Gansey was in most danger of getting a B — but Ronan was looking, sideways, at Adam arching his back to stretch, and then twisting side to side. Probably at Adam’s boxers, showing a rumpled edge over the top of his uniform pants, and at the freckled skin over Adam’s hipbones.

Gansey didn’t say anything. His face was burning. 

Noah was doing something with all the long strips of paper. Gansey, resigned, now recognized it as Ronan’s copy of their AP Euro study guide. By the time he’d stopped thinking about Ronan looking at Adam like that, or what it meant that he knew Ronan’s expressions well enough to recognize even _that_ one, or anything like that, Noah had braided up the bits of paper into something like a circlet.

“Here,” Noah said, brightly, depositing it onto Gansey’s head. “Try not to worry so much. You’re going to do fine.” 

###

The rest of the week passed. It felt blurry; Gansey only felt awake for brief and shocking intervals. His vision was only clear and focused with the sharp edge of panic hovering behind his eyes. 

He was worried. He had done a little more research, carefully alone at Monmouth while Ronan was out doing God only knew what all night, Noah soundly asleep. He probably shouldn’t have done some of the reading he’d stumbled into. Gansey had never stopped reading just because something was upsetting, but “upsetting” had always been a purely academic concept to him: people who disagreed with his theories, the discovery that a useful-seeming lead was, in fact, a dead end. 

In fact, it still felt academic. None of what he was reading seemed real: _gay teens at risk of homelessness, at risk for mental health complications, at risk for substance abuse, more likely to suffer social isolation and engage in other risky behaviors_. But it was real, and this reading was starting to feel real to Gansey himself, on a gut level. In his bones. 

Obviously, Gansey did not trust statistics merely due to their existence — it was so easy to draw up numbers to mean whatever you wanted them to mean. Obviously, Ronan’s homosexuality wasn’t precisely why he, for example, was homeless, per se. Obviously, Ronan could be terribly unpleasant for reasons other than that, as this picture of him suggested, he was perhaps covering a soft underbelly, some carefully curated secret. But nonetheless, Gansey kept reading, because he couldn’t stop himself. _Higher rates of successful or attempted suicide_. 

All of this was a problem far too large for Gansey to fix, but that had always been true about Ronan, and it had never stopped him before. 

###

Gansey caught Henry on Friday morning, on his way to French. “Cheng!” he called, and Henry paused in the hallway. He turned, looking at Gansey with a pleasant and inquisitive mien.

“Hey,” Gansey said when he had caught up to him, a little out of breath. “We’ll see you on Saturday?” he asked. He wasn’t about to drag Ronan kicking and screaming, or spend ages talking Adam around, if Henry hadn’t actually meant it.

“Yeah,” Henry said with faint caution, looking as though he thought Gansey was playing some sort of trick on him. 

“Great!” Gansey said. “We’re looking forward to it.” 

“You and Lynch,” Henry said, still cautious.

“Yes! Well, I’m looking forward to it,” Gansey said. “But Ronan will be there.” Henry laughed a little; Gansey was pleased. He liked it when his attempts at charm worked. “And probably Adam, too, he never comes to parties.”

“Right,” Henry said. He didn’t look wary anymore, and tugged Gansey towards the wall by the strap of his schoolbag, so they weren’t standing in the middle of the hallway impeding traffic. 

“Look,” Henry said, in a low voice, bending his head down to Gansey’s. His breath tickled Gansey’s ear. “Is Parrish cool with this? I didn’t think he knew about you guys.” 

“About —” Gansey said, but he shut his mouth before he could make an idiot of himself. Yet again. Henry meant him and Ronan. Henry meant that Gansey and Ronan would be expected to act like a couple at his party, a fact of which Gansey had been resolutely and grimly aware and which he had, honestly, planned to spring on Ronan with no warning. It was just that this was supposed to happen at the party to which Gansey had also invited Adam. Therefore: in front of Adam. 

“Um,” Gansey said, improvising wildly.

“He’s kind of a redneck,” Cheng said, while Gansey was still scrambling to come up with some explanation that wouldn’t involve saying, out loud, the primary thing he was currently thinking, which was: this was a terrible plan, in what world was this a _plan_ at all, and why in the world had Gansey’s first response to Cheng’s “discovery” been to easily accept that he and Ronan looked like a couple? Why had his next thought been that they should act like one? Why was it that Gansey had barely managed to study at all for his midterms, consumed as he was by — all of this?

Henry’s words finally registered. Gansey said, “Hey,” and frowned at him. Henry looked entirely unrepentant. 

With as much confidence and dignity as he could muster, Gansey said, “Parrish is my friend. And Ronan’s. He’ll be fine.” 

“If you say so,” Henry said. “I mean, you and Lynch aren’t exactly big into PDA, it’d be easy to miss. Unless you’re different in private,” he added, and waggled his eyebrows. 

Gansey, still overwhelmed and playing catch-up, forced a weak laugh and staggered through the last few steps of that social interaction, before fleeing once the late bell rang. 

“Monsieur Gansey, you are late!” his French teacher trilled as he slid into his desk. 

“ _Oui_ ,” Gansey wheezed, and stumbled through a jumbled and apologetic sentence fragment. He didn’t have the wherewithal to conjugate a verb at the moment.

###

The rest of the day was more of the same. Gansey figured his safest bet was to drop the issue of the party altogether, and not bring it up again until, ideally, Saturday, after the car was already parked at Cheng’s place. If they went, after all. Gansey wasn’t sure, anymore, if it was such a good idea; there were forces simmering under the surface that Gansey did not know or understand. What was worse, Gansey didn’t understand his own reactions to this entire godawful situation. At his very lowest, Gansey had at least understood what drove him, even when no one else did.

In any case, getting Ronan to go places he didn’t want to go was like taking a cat with opposable thumbs to the veterinarian. There was always a chance Ronan would stubbornly refuse to get into the car, if he found out too early, or decide to be dramatic and get out of the car while it was moving. 

Adam, though, would probably need a gentler touch.

“So, are you going to be free Saturday night?” Gansey said during lunch free on Friday. Ronan had skipped out on lunch — he was either off doing something with Noah, or he was at the squash courts. It was a balmy December day, a pleasant 50 out. Certainly warm enough if you were sufficiently bundled up; Adam and Gansey had eaten quickly and were taking a meandering walk across campus, over the soccer field and into the woods that bordered Aglionby’s campus.

“Man, seriously?” Adam said. “Cheng’s party?” 

“I think it would be good for us to go,” Gansey said. “And it’ll be easier to talk Ronan into it if you’re also there.” 

“Ronan can’t stand me,” Adam said easily.

“That’s not true,” Gansey said, trying not to think about Ronan’s eyes on Adam or the hot, embarrassed squeezing thump his heart gave at the memory. “You’ve been getting along much better, I thought.”

Adam shrugged. His hair was falling into his face, shaggy and uneven, and his eyes were hooded and ruminative, glittering under his lowered eyelashes. 

“I’ll go,” he said, finally. “I guess. I’m just not crazy about parties.” 

“Or Henry,” Gansey said. He talked over Adam — “Oh, he’s _Henry_ now? Does Lynch know about that?” — because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to think of a better way to bring that up. “Why is it you don’t like him?” 

Adam didn’t answer. Gansey stared hard at a tree branch that had blown down and landed next to the soccer field. 

“It’s not that I don’t like him,” Adam said, eventually. “Not him specifically. I’m just not crazy about his type.” 

“And what type is that?” Gansey asked. He couldn’t entirely disagree. Henry Cheng wasn’t someone he’d have chosen to be friends with; he was very loud, and very persistently outgoing in a way Gansey found personally off-putting. 

Adam tilted his head and looked at Gansey. There was a crooked spot in Adam’s jaw with a fine scar over it, and his summer freckles were starting to fade. “He’s got more money than sense,” Adam said, which wasn’t quite the answer Gansey had been expecting. “And he doesn’t know how to drive.” 

Adam’s voice was nearly apologetic. Gansey didn’t quite know why. After a moment, he wondered whether those were complaints Adam had had about him at some point, or maybe still did. Probably.

He took a deep breath. “So it’s not because he’s gay?” 

“Is he?” Adam said, sounding surprised. Gansey glanced at him. His fair eyebrows were raised.

“That can’t come as much of a surprise,” Gansey said, stiffly. He hadn’t noticed until Henry had made it obvious, but — apparently — he wasn’t particularly bright about all this. It had taken him eight months to figure it out about Ronan, and he’d been living with him for more than half that time. 

“I thought he was —” Adam said, before cutting himself off. He finished, awkwardly, “Not gay, exactly. One of the guys at work doesn’t like him ‘cause Cheng made a move on his girlfriend, and she took him up on it.” 

Gansey was at a loss for words. He didn’t know what any of that had meant; this wasn’t how he’d expected the conversation to go. He did his best to rally on.

“So it’s not that?” Gansey pressed. “You wouldn’t have a problem with it if he was? If he were, I mean?” 

There was a pause. Gansey’s stomach sank.

“Gansey, are you coming out to me?” Adam said, sounding a little mocking, and Gansey felt his face burn. 

“What!” he cried out, a little too loudly and entirely despite himself. He nearly tripped over his own feet. “That’s not funny!” he said, and hoped that it didn’t sound like he doth’d protest too much. 

Adam had stopped walking. He put his hand on Gansey’s arm to steady him where he’d tripped.

The two of them were alone. There was no one out on the athletic fields, this time of day, and certainly no one out in the sparse trees that characterized the manicured edge-of-field woods. 

The wind was picking up. Gansey’s scarf nearly blew back into his face. He tried his best to tuck his chin into the scarf, to duck his head so Adam couldn’t get Gansey to look at him.

“I didn’t mean to joke,” Adam said, letting go of Gansey’s arm. “It’d be fine if you were, y’know.”

“ _I_ know that!” Gansey exclaimed. This conversation was going all wrong. _Gansey_ wasn't the one who needed this kind of reassurance.

“Alright,” Adam said, agreeably, in the same placating tone he’d used the first time Gansey had insisted he really could manage to fix the Pig himself this time, and had ended up starting a small fire in the Monmouth lot.

Adam had helped him put it out, of course, and then explained to Gansey what he had done wrong, and helped him fix it. He must have been very frustrated with Gansey, but he had been gentlemanly about it nonetheless, as he often was. Adam was rarely mean for the sake of it, and typically had to be goaded into cruelty for his sharp tongue to emerge. Gansey decided to stop worrying. Whether Adam had really meant that it was okay, or if he’d just been paying lip service, didn’t matter; he’d gotten the words out, which was more than Gansey had really expected, and they could work out the rest from there. 

There was a noise. Gansey turned to look; they were fairly close to the squash courts, less than a quarter mile out, and Gansey’s bright scarf and Adam’s auburn hair must have been visible through the glass doors. 

One of the doors was closing, slowly. The noise repeated itself: Ronan calling “Hey!” 

He was jogging towards them in basketball shorts and a tank top, squash racket still in hand. Adam said, under his breath, “Are you gonna have a talk like this with Ronan, too?”

Gansey pretended not to hear him as they picked their way through the mostly-bare underbrush and back towards the building as Ronan approached at speed.

“Hey, Lynch,” Adam said, when Ronan was close enough to hear them at a normal volume. “Don’t you have a partner you’re abandoning?”

“It’s Rutherford,” Ronan called back, dismissively. “He doesn't need the practice.” This was true. Rutherford was nationally ranked, in both tennis and squash. There had been an announcement at assembly one morning, congratulating him. 

By the time Ronan had jogged close enough that he could actually talk to them, he must have been freezing. Gansey unwound his scarf.

“Go back and change,” he said, trying not to sound too fretful and motherly. He didn’t dare to tuck his scarf around Ronan’s neck, after all; it would look stupid, with Ronan barely dressed. On top of that, Ronan was covered with a fine sheen of sweat, his pale skin nearly glowing in the noontime sun, and Gansey’s scarf was cashmere. 

“What the hell are you guys even doing?” Ronan said, ignoring Gansey. 

Ronan was still breathing heavily. In the distance, the door to the squash courts swung open, and Rutherford’s head emerged before calling out: “Lynch!” 

Rutherford’s head disappeared to peer back over his shoulder at their faculty sponsor. “What the — _heck_! Get back here!” 

Ronan ran a hand over his skull, a nervous gesture. He flipped Rutherford off, a process which at this distance relied more on large, telegraphed arm motions than on the ability to see individual fingers. 

“Fuck this,” Ronan said, taking two rapid steps closer towards them. Adam took a startled half-step back, but Ronan was quick and had a large stride. 

He eyed Gansey and Adam, then, briefly: a little once-over. Gansey couldn’t tell what Ronan was thinking. He was nearly inscrutable. His hand went up, as if to fix Gansey’s hair under his hat, and then hesitated before drifting down to rest on Gansey’s bicep. Gansey’s heart was thumping so fast he could barely hear anything else past the rushing in his ears. _Yes_ , Gansey thought, nonsensically. _Yes_. 

Then Adam’s weight shifted, and the rustle of leaves —  the reminder of Adam’s presence? —  was enough for Ronan to drop his hand like a shot, his nearly-vulnerable face shifting back into a scowl.

Gansey still had his scarf wrapped around his hands, where he’d unwound it from around his neck. Ronan shoved his racket under one armpit and took the scarf from Gansey.

He looped Gansey’s scarf around Adam’s neck, and did something to it which was either a knot or an extraordinarily complicated loop of some sort. It took long enough that Adam fought back, a bit, batting at Ronan’s hands, but Ronan was determined. 

“There,” he said. “It’s freezing out, Parrish. Your junk-shop jacket's a piece of shit. Steal one out of the lost and found next time.” 

With that he ran back towards the squash courts; Rutherford was still holding the door open for him. 

“I’m sorry,” Gansey said, deeply embarrassed on Ronan’s behalf for no reason he could quite identify. Not because Ronan was being nasty about money; that couldn’t be a surprise. But something about that interaction had gone subtly awry, somehow. This whole day was going subtly awry. Gansey didn’t understand why he still felt like he was missing something; he really had done quite a lot of work to get on top of this mess. 

“I’ll come to the party,” Adam said. “But I really don’t think you’ll be able to drag Ronan along.” 

“Of course I will,” Gansey said, firmly. “It’ll be good for him.” 

“Hm,” Adam said, and then: “I hope you know what you’re doing.” 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL, IT CERTAINLY HAS BEEN A WHILE. i went back to school between last update and now but now i am DONE with the semester. thanks for bearing with me and i hope y'all will still enjoy this!

Gansey very nearly managed to pay attention in class that afternoon. He would have succeeded, and he even managed, by and large, to rein in and pen up his crawling thoughts. That took up so much of his attention that he didn’t have any left for class discussion. 

Gansey wondered if the teacher could tell how distracted he was. Gansey wondered if she would be disappointed in him, and hoped not; he enjoyed that class. She’d let him hand in a paper on Glendower when they read _Henry IV_. He was finding Hamlet much less engaging. 

But at least Adam and Ronan weren’t in this class with him — and he wasn’t thinking about them. He was staring at his Harkness chart, brain too empty even to track what the other students were saying. He just filled it in with a haphazard mass of scribbled lines, the way most of the other boys in his class tended to, and kept his watch carefully within his peripheral vision. 

After that class, Gansey had intramural athletics. He had no idea what he was going to do;: something about the thought of trekking to the athletic building in order to change into a t-shirt and sweat shorts, and then to spend forty-seven minutes sweating in a stale room full of weight machines, was like marching to an execution. 

Still, he had a sense that failing to show up would be worse, somehow. A betrayal, or cowardice. And maybe he would have some time to himself to think. The supervising teacher was the crew coach, and he usually let Gansey spend the whole period uninterrupted on one of the ERGs in the back. Some quiet would be nice. So Gansey put his things into his bag and half-reluctantly trudged out. 

Ronan was waiting for him. He was leaning against one of the retaining walls around the carefully landscaped flowerbeds that dotted Aglionby’s campus, one foot against the wall and his hands jammed into his pockets, shoulders up by his chin. His shirt was untucked and his tie existed only on the merest of technicalities.

“Where’s Adam?” Gansey said, because his brain was full of static. This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted to think about.

Ronan jerked his shoulders practically up to his ears. An extraordinarily aggressive shrug.

“Listen,” he said. Gansey waited, listening. 

When Ronan didn’t say anything, Gansey said, “Because I’m going to be late to athletics.” 

Ronan said, “Let’s just go.” 

Gansey had no idea what to say. “Where?” he said, and gestured vaguely. Other students were streaming past them, mostly out to the athletic complex. Ronan had practice.

Ronan shrugged again. “I don’t have practice today,” he said, which was almost certainly a lie. Ronan very much enjoyed athletic exertion, usually; it was one of the few things that could still be relied upon to motivate him. Even when he cut all his classes for the day, he still sometimes showed up to practice, or he’d be rattling around Monmouth when Gansey got home for the day, like a dog who had been thirty seconds away from going at the sofa pillows. 

It wasn’t that he never cut practice, of course. From the team’s perspective, Gansey was sure that Ronan seemed fickle and unreliable, unlikely to ever win a captaincy. But Ronan usually at least turned up to meets, and to most practices, unless he had what he considered a pressing reason: the team was going to do something social after practice, and Ronan didn’t want to spend time with them, or Gansey had asked him to drive somewhere, or he didn't want to .

Gansey was fairly certain there wasn’t a team dinner that night, which meant Ronan wanted to be off campus for some other reason. Maybe he thought that if he spent time with Gansey now, Gansey wouldn’t push him to go to the party tomorrow, which Gansey could only think was a good thing. Or maybe Ronan was as anxious and stressed as Gansey was. 

“Sure,” Gansey said, finally, after his silence had, again, stretched a little too long. 

Ronan’s shoulders relaxed. He pushed away from the wall and bumped an elbow against Gansey’s.

###

Declan approached them in the parking lot. Gansey wasn’t sure if he’d been waiting, or if he’d just come back or if he, too, was about to leave. It didn’t really matter. 

“Ronan,” Declan said, which was a violation of the Lynch brothers’ fragile _détente_ in and of itself. “Do you have a minute?” 

Gansey inserted himself into the interaction before Ronan could escalate. Declan and Ronan usually didn’t talk on campus: Ronan ignored Declan as loudly as it was possible to do such a thing, and Declan pretended that didn’t bother him with an extremely unsuccessful air of wounded dignity. Getting called into the office for brawling on campus was something that Declan and Gansey, on Ronan’s behalf, were both eager to avoid. Declan didn’t just approach Ronan to talk to him.

Well, Gansey supposed it was possible that the two of them often had quick conversations, just when he wasn’t around, but he doubted it. Usually, Gansey was an intermediary, or a buffer zone. 

“Ronan and I were just leaving, actually,” Gansey said. It didn’t feel as smooth as it usually did. 

“It’s fine,” Ronan said grimly, shaking Gansey’s hand off his arm. Gansey let go, surprised; he hadn’t noticed taking hold of it. 

Declan tipped his chin towards his own car, and Ronan stalked towards it, back to being wound-tight. Gansey loitered by the Pig as Declan trailed after Ronan, ready to spring into action. He wished he could hear what they were talking about. Ronan didn’t look happy, but then he never did, talking to Declan. He didn’t look angry, though, or at least not like he was about to start swinging. 

Gansey shifted his weight from one foot to another. He wanted to get into the car but was very aware that the situation might change on a dime, and then he’d be five cars away while Ronan did his best to break Declan’s nose. 

Declan seemed completely calm, while Ronan looked twitchy and agitated. He was darting little nervous glances over at Gansey, ticking his head over to look and then turning back to Declan. No one was gesticulating. Gansey pondered whether it was self-centered to assume Ronan was nervous about… well. Him. 

With a flash of all-consuming horror, Gansey wondered whether Declan knew. Wondered whether that was what was consuming Ronan, too.

Adam clearly knew what was going on, or had some vague idea of the shape of things. Gansey had decided  — had discovered that it was barely a choice at all  — to support Ronan, which meant he had decided to be Ronan’s… well, that he was going to carry on as he had been. He was going to let Henry Cheng continue to believe that there was something between them.

It had honestly not occurred to him that other people might notice. Henry hadn’t seemed surprised. Adam had perhaps seemed a little uncertain, like he thought Gansey was in over his head or indulging Ronan in ways he shouldn’t be indulged, but that was his usual affect. His usual attitude. Certainly he hadn’t seemed shocked or surprised. People had, perhaps, _been_ noticing something that Gansey had no idea they could see, assuming things that Gansey had never considered. 

It wasn’t that the thought upset him in and of itself; he was used to people assuming things about him that didn’t match up with how he saw himself. It was just that he hadn’t even known it was a possibility, that this was something he should have guarded against. That something about Gansey might lead people to Ronan’s soft underbelly; that wasn’t the sort of friend Gansey ever wanted to be.

Gansey did not know what he was doing. Gansey had never known what he was doing less over the course of his entire natural and unnatural life.

Declan, far away, nodded. He moved to pat Ronan on the back as Ronan turned and jogged back over to Gansey. Declan’s hand hovered in the air, unmoving, for a few moments before he, too, turned away.

“So,” Ronan said, and he wouldn’t meet Gansey’s eyes. 

“So,” Gansey echoed back. “What do you want to do?” 

###

They drove out into the mountains, into the woods, towards a meandering creek bed. Ronan gave Gansey directions, but otherwise, they didn’t talk. Gansey had never been here before. It was a kindness, when Ronan did this for him. Maybe this is what Ronan did when he wasn’t in class; it’s not like Gansey had ever asked. Something about the thought of a Ronan who couldn’t bear Aglionby but spent the day driving around the Henrietta countryside, looking for places to show Gansey was warming in a way Gansey couldn’t quite confront. 

The creekbed rushed along beside them. Ronan clambered up a few boulders on the riverbed and just sat there, watching Gansey fiddle along with his EMF meter, listening to him talk about healing springs, chucking acorns and sticks and pebbles into the water. 

When they drove back, the washed-out sky was still fading. Gansey felt settled. Almost happy. He let his hand brush Ronan’s knee where it was jammed against the console as he turned off the radio, just to see if Ronan would let him. Just to see if he could. 

“What did Declan want?” Gansey asked, keeping his voice idle. His heart thundered. 

Ronan didn’t answer for long enough that Gansey moved to switch the radio back on. But Ronan caught Gansey’s arm, and curled his hand around Gansey’s wrist. His fingers were pressed against Gansey’s pulse. 

Gansey lowered his hand to the gear shift, and Ronan’s went with him. 

As they passed the sign demarcating Henrietta’s incorporated areas from its environs, Ronan was still hanging on. His palm was clammy against Gansey’s wrist. Gansey felt himself smiling. He glanced over at Ronan, to see if he was too, but Ronan was braced towards the window, and Gansey couldn’t see his face. 

When they got back to Monmouth, they’d been driving in silence for nearly half an hour. Ronan let go of Gansey’s wrist as they pulled into the lot, and wiped his hand off on his uniform pants. He’d lost his tie somewhere in the woods. Gansey despaired of him; his whole heart felt so full it might be overflowing.

Ronan trailed after Gansey on their way inside. It was dark out and Gansey hadn’t left the porch light on that morning. Ronan flipped the lights on for Gansey once they’d made it up to the second floor, and then hesitated. 

“I’ll go to that fucking party if Parrish does,” he said. 

This was an unasked-for boon. Unexpected goodwill and cooperation. Gansey didn’t want to push his luck, but he was so surprised that the words slipped out anyway: “And you’ll be polite?” 

Ronan’s face slipped back into its familiar scowl. The look he gave Gansey was almost fond and truculent at the same time: _I will if they will, unless I don’t feel like it_ , or maybe, _you should know me better than to ask that_ , but his mouth was curling up at the corner, and his eyes were. Gansey didn’t know. Different, somehow. 

“Okay,” Gansey said, lamely. Ronan’s mouth curled a little more. 

He turned away to disappear into his room, from which he didn’t reemerge for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmu or reblog this on [tumblr](http://spikenards.tumblr.com/post/174703181344)! 
> 
> sorry that this chapter is SO short - consider it a teaser; the much longer christmas party update is still to come! thanks to everyone who's been like "hey are you ever going to write more of that fic? but no pressure" and also to izzy for reading over this update on her commute. 
> 
> i might post an outtake (declan's Terrible conversation with ronan) to tumblr at some point so keep an eye on this space for the link.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI, EVERYONE. uh. there's going to be more to this, probably. i'm back at school and busier than i've been in my LIFE so we'll see how i manage. maybe i'll get this fic finished before the next holiday fic exchange. we shall.......... see.

Ronan didn’t emerge from his room until well past noon on Saturday. When he finally slouched into the main room, Gansey was sitting cross-legged on the floor in boxers and an old sweatshirt, trying to hook up the space heater. 

Ronan’s keys were dangling at his hip. He didn’t say anything, just nodded at Gansey and headed out. 

It grew dark outside. Gansey had bundled up, eventually, even with the space heater choking and coughing its way into life, and had spent a miserable twenty minutes wrapped in a blanket, crouched in front of his dresser. He was trying to figure out what to wear, and then wondering if what he wore made a difference. 

He put on the clothes he would have put on any other Saturday, finally, and checked his watch; they were already half an hour late.

When Ronan returned it was late enough that Gansey was approaching fretfulness. Or resignation, perhaps; the knife’s edge between those two emotions was a familiar balm. He heard a car door slam in the lot, some keys jingling up the stairs. The door cracked open and then slammed into the wall. Ronan loomed in the doorframe, Adam lingering behind him.

“Lynch picked me up,” Adam said, as Ronan dropped his keys and darted to his room. “From work, I mean.” 

Adam shifted his weight; he had a bag with him, which meant he might be staying the night after all. Gansey had assumed their plans had fallen through.

Gansey said, automatically, “Do you want to put your bag down?” and then, as Adam did so, “I thought you weren’t working this weekend.”

Adam shrugged. “Just at Boyd’s. Got some homework done, it was slow.”

“Ah,” Gansey said, and nodded jerkily. He had no idea what else to say. 

“Hey,” Adam said. “Where’ve you been?”

Gansey blinked, and then noticed Noah’s wispy hair shining in the staircase. Noah shrugged, and picked up Ronan’s keys off the floor. He jingled them, and then hung them on their hook.

“Have fun at the party,” Noah said. 

Gansey felt a pang of guilt. “I’m sure you could come along if you wanted to,” he said, though he wasn’t entirely sure that was true. Adam snorted, and Gansey fought the urge to throw him a disapproving look.

Noah smiled, though. He looked tired, strained, but the smile lit up his face. 

“Nah,” he said, as the door to his room closed behind him, “But you guys have fun.”

Adam and Gansey stood in silence. “So,” Gansey said, awkwardly, and Adam called out, “Lynch!”

Gansey shut his mouth with a click. Vague misgivings were beginning to coalesce; perhaps he should politely cancel on Adam, and Henry Cheng, and just sit down and try to coax Ronan into conversation. 

“What?” Ronan shouted back.

“Are you done primping?” Adam yelled, and Gansey felt his shoulders hunch before he was able to correct for the flinch. Adam was eyeing him. Gansey stood straight. 

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Gansey said to Adam, as quietly as he could. 

“Uh huh,” Adam said, and didn’t bother to make eye contact with Gansey: a half-polite dismissal. 

Ronan shouted, “Keep your shirt on, Parrish,” and threw the door to his room open. He’d changed his clothes, and he had Gansey’s letter jacket crumpled in one hand. He kicked his door shut as he tossed it to Gansey, and jerked his head to the door as Gansey fumbled a catch. 

“Are we going or not?” Ronan bit out, voice a controlled snarl.

###

Ronan knew his way around the winding culs-de-sac of student housing better than Adam or Gansey did; Adam didn’t spend much time socializing, and Gansey’s explorations tended to lead him out of town entirely. Ronan directed them to Henry’s place in a bored voice, rattling off cross-streets and landmarks as the Pig squeezed between cars street-parked on both sides of narrow, poorly-paved roads.

Henry's house was dark. It didn't look like there was a party happening: no teens milling about the lawn, no thumping bass. Briefly, Gansey wondered if they were in the right place, at the right time, with the same irrational uncertainty he always faced when arriving in a new place. Ronan and Adam might have been assuming the same thing, though, and it was up to him to project confidence.

“Well,” Gansey said, pulling the Pig around the driveway and into the cramped, paved space at the back of the house. He couldn't see a way to park without blocking in all four of the cars lined up in the driveway, so he just threw the hand brake and pulled the keys out. Ronan remained sulkily silent in shotgun. Adam was peering out the rear window.

With relief, Gansey saw that faint light was spilling out of the basement windows, invisible from the street, but a sign that they  _ were _ in the right place at the right time, after all.

“Shall we?” Gansey said, and looked at Adam in the rear view mirror. Ronan's face was turned away now, to glower elsewhere, his arms folded tightly across his chest. His tattoo snarled out from the neck of his unbuttoned henley. Gansey had washed that shirt, because he did all their laundry; it was unbearably soft.

Adam half-shrugged. Ronan's door flung itself open onto the night, and when Gansey glanced back, Ronan was already on the back porch, door left gaping open behind him.

Gansey smiled at Adam ruefully, and handed him the keys. Adam climbed out the passenger side door, and slammed it shut. He waited before Gansey got out of the car before locking it.

The back door was unlocked. Gansey couldn't help but feel that was inappropriate; Henry was their host. He shouldn't just leave them to wander in by themselves. What if Gansey had gotten the address wrong, and they were wandering into the wrong house? They  _ weren't  _ — he'd checked the address against the student handbook, and there was the light in the basement, and now that they were on the porch he could hear faint music coming from the house  — but it was the principle of the thing.

Gansey held the door open for Adam. It opened onto a spacious, eat-in kitchen; Henry was standing in the doorway to the basement, backlit by a hazy glow rising from beneath. 

“Ganseyman!” Henry exclaimed, “You made it!” He was wearing patterned pants that clung to his thighs, and a hideously ugly sweater  — possibly festive, certainly festooned with patches of feathery wool that made it difficult to distinguish any underlying pattern  — with a neat button-down collar poking over the neckline. He had a pair of sunglasses pushed up into his hair. 

Gansey wondered if he should have dressed differently. Adam was just wearing some of his work clothes, his ripped camo pants and one of his half-dozen interchangeable logo tee-shirts under his too-large windbreaker, and Gansey felt his faint unease expand into an empathetic pang of underdressed misery. He wondered if Adam was uncomfortable. He wondered if he was being condescending.

Henry presented his fist. Gansey, well-trained by now, reciprocated the gesture and bumped their knuckles together. 

“Yes,” Gansey said, after what must have been an extended uncomfortable silence. Henry did not present his fist to Adam, and Adam hadn’t greeted him, either. They were eyeing each other; Gansey didn’t like Henry’s expression, and Adam was standing next to him closely enough that it would be obvious if Gansey tried to catch a look at his face. 

“Your worse half’s downstairs,” Henry said to Gansey, finally, and Gansey heard it for the dismissal it was. He hesitated. 

“Adam?” he said, and Henry flapped a hand at him. 

“Go collect your boy,” Henry said, rolling his eyes and hopefully not noticing Gansey’s aborted twitch at hearing Ronan called  — well. Called that. “Parrish can help me in the kitchen for a second.” 

Gansey tried to catch Adam’s eye, but Adam nudged his elbow against Gansey’s side.

“Go on,” Adam said, voice soft and accent pronounced. “I’ll catch up.” 

###

Gansey stepped into the narrow landing at the top of the basement stairs, and pulled the door closed behind himself. 

Then he stood there, lingering. Loitering. 

The stairs were arranged such that the basement ceiling cut away by Gansey’s feet  — as soon as Gansey took a single step down, anyone already at the party would be able to see his feet, and know someone was standing there. 

So he just stood there, a shameful crunch of cowardice chewing at his ribs. Soft noise and gentle light beckoned him downwards.

He had nearly worked up the nerve to head down, his knuckles white around the battered banister, when he heard a noise behind himself: the fridge opening. The basement door he’d tucked himself behind was extraordinarily flimsy; he could hear  _ everything _ . 

Had Adam and Henry just been standing in the kitchen in silence that whole time?

The fridge door closed again. 

“So,” Henry said, setting something down on the counter. “What’s a boy like you doing in a place like this?” 

Adam did not respond. 

“Look,” Henry said then. “It’s  — whatever. I don’t care what the whole deal is with you guys.”

Adam said, “There’s no deal.” 

“ _ Whatever _ ,” Henry said, slightly louder than before. “I’m saying I don’t care. We’re all just here to have a good time.” 

There was another long pause interrupted by faint noises: things being placed on counters, cabinets closing. Henry said, “Could you get those?” and Adam made a faint noise of assent.

“Just don’t be weird about it.” Henry said, decisively.

“Lynch  _ and  _ Gansey are here and you’re telling  _ me _ not to be weird?” Adam said. 

Gansey felt this to be ungentlemanly criticism of a friend to someone who was still functionally a stranger, albeit a stranger who possessed several of Gansey’s larger secrets. 

Though perhaps it could be called an accurate criticism.

Henry laughed. “Fair,” he said. “Very fair, Parrish.”

There was a brief silence. Henry said: “You want a beer?”

“I don’t drink beer,” Adam said. 

“We’ve also got… cider. And Smirnoff Ice, and Seagrams... Or there’s liquor and mixers downstairs.” 

“No, thank you,” Adam said. Gansey couldn’t tell what his tone might be, whether Adam’s patience was unraveling. If it had been Gansey hovering solicitously, Adam would already have that irritated frown between his eyebrows. 

Henry continued. “If you don’t drink, I’ve also got  — ” and Adam interrupted him.

“I don’t smoke, either. Or do pills, okay? I’m good. I’m the designated driver.” 

“Look,” Henry said. “Never let it be said that I’m not an excellent host. Even to gatecrashers.” 

“I’m not gatecrashing,” Adam said. “You invited me.” 

Henry said, “You’re Gansey’s back-up. Escape valve. Does he think I’m catching?” and Gansey wondered whether he should intervene, somehow, but Adam let out a short laugh. 

“No,” Adam said. “Too late for that, I’d say.” 

Gansey forced himself to move. He shouldn’t be listening to this; he of all people should by now understand that navigating the complicated levels of trust and privacy that had characterized this whole situation was difficult enough without other people poking their noses in. 

He also wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Adam had to say. 

But then again, wasn’t it always better to know? 

Gansey chewed over this thought as he carefully descended the stairs, which weren’t so much rickety as simply uneven, the edges of each step bowing downwards so that it felt as if Gansey might slip forward each time he put his foot down. 

He made it downstairs still lost in thought. There was something playing over a set of speakers jammed onto one of the higher stairs, facing out into the room. Gansey faintly recognized it from school functions, or hearing it blaring out of someone else’s car in the Nino’s lot: heavy autotuning, a female vocalist. 

The music wasn’t loud enough to overpower conversation, but the room wasn’t loud: conversation kept to a quiet susurrus. There were over a dozen boys packed into the room, perhaps more than twenty. Gansey recognized most of Henry’s housemates, and a few other guys who were sufficiently obvious about their preferences that it wasn’t shocking to see them there. 

Henry’s housemates, the guys who sat with him at lunch, were mostly playing pool; everyone else was caught up in little clumps of two or three or four, standing just a little too close together, bending their heads towards each other till hair fell across their foreheads, holding tight to their red party cups but letting their free hands brush together.

Everyone was being very careful not to stare at him, but Gansey knew they must all be paying sharp attention. He felt his face burn.

There was a card table set up in the back corner with a big bowl of chips, two boxes of beer, a stack of takeout pizza boxes, and four or five two-liter boxes of soda. Ronan was loitering in the corner with his back to the wall, glowering out at the room and taking a deep draught from what was, if Gansey knew him, at least his second beer. He was ignoring everyone else at the party with single-minded intensity, and no one seemed inclined to bring him out of his self-imposed isolation.

Gansey made a beeline for him.

“Ronan,” Gansey said, putting his hand on Ronan’s arm.

His shirt was very soft under Gansey’s palm, his arm corded and bony beneath the softness.

Ronan didn’t say anything. He lifted his other arm and tipped the beer back, baring his throat as he drank. 

He exhaled hard after he was finished, ducking his head, and pulled his arm away from Gansey’s to crush the empty can between his palms and deposit it on the edge of the card table. Gansey flicked it into the recycle bin.

Gansey put his hand back on Ronan’s arm. After few moments of internal debate  — during which Ronan acquired and popped open another drink, a bottle, this time — Ronan cracked the cap off against the heavy silver ring on his thumb, and then tipped the bottle against his lips, his long eyelashes leaving dark shadows under his eyes — he swallowed —

Gansey slid his hand from the bend of Ronan’s elbow to the knobs of his wrist, and let his fingertips trail over the back of Ronan’s hand. He felt clumsy and tongue-tied.

Ronan twitched his hand away. He put the bottle down, and looked around as if seeking a way away. Gansey felt a sharp twinge of disappointment. 

“Please,” Gansey said, because he was having a hard time keeping it together, in front of all these people.

It wasn’t fair to ask this comfort of Ronan, but his thoughts were beginning to whirl, to come untethered from their joints.

Ronan looked at him. Gansey realized with a jolt that it was the first time Ronan had looked at him, properly looked him in the face, in days. 

He looked down; he had to. Gansey’s mouth filled, sourly, with the taste of regret. He had ruined things after all; yet again, Gansey’s best efforts had gone awry, had only made things worse.

Ronan set his beer down. His hand hovered briefly by his side, and then he was clasping Gansey’s shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” Gansey said, after a few moments. His back was to the room, which was something of a relief. He didn’t think he could bear to be aware of how many eyes were on them. “This was stupid. You can… We can leave, if you want.” 

Ronan’s hand flexed.

“It’s fine,” Ronan said.

“It’s  _ not _ ,” Gansey insisted. 

Ronan rolled his eyes. He let go of Gansey’s shoulder, and bumped the back of his hand against Gansey’s, before pressing his own palm over Gansey’s and folding their hands together. He’d gone back to not-looking at Gansey, but there was a flush rising in his cheekbones, and in the tips of his ears. 

Gansey squeezed Ronan’s hand, and exhaled, deeply relieved. He leaned up against Ronan’s side. He wanted to lean against Ronan so hard and for so long that they melted together. He wanted  —

The music had changed into something low and crooning; Ronan’s palms were clammy. 

Gansey felt a surge of affection. “You’re my best friend, you know,” he said. 

“Jesus,” Ronan groaned, and gripped Gansey’s hand a little tighter. “We’re not talking about this.”

###

Then they just stood like that. Gansey wasn’t sure whether they could gravitate away from the drinks table; he didn’t want to look over his shoulder and see whether anyone was staring at them. He let Ronan nearly hold him for a few long moments, his face pressed against Ronan's shoulder. He pulled back, finally, when his face stopped burning and he thought he'd be able to keep it together. 

Ronan picked a beer up off the table, reaching his arm around Gansey to get to it, and took a drag. Gansey wasn’t sure he could stop his face from doing — well, something, but Ronan just rolled his eyes. 

“It’s mine,” Ronan said. Gansey eyed the bottle. It might have been the bottle Ronan had just opened, but it was nearly empty. Ronan’s shoulder hunched a little, but still he finished the drink before dropping it into the large recycling bin half-tucked under the table. It made an ungodly clatter. 

Henry and Adam descended the stairs and Ronan grimly reached for yet another beer. Gansey squeezed Ronan’s hand. Ronan’s palm was cool and still damp. He didn’t get himself another drink.

Henry was carrying one six-pack of canned beers and a few sleeves of solo cups. One of the beers was missing — he had it in his hand, tab popped, and he was carrying the rest of them through the empty plastic loop. His sunglasses had slipped down as he descended the stairs, covering his eyes. 

Adam, on the other hand, had a cardboard box tipped against his chest whose flipped-up flaps nearly obscured his face. It looked heavy; the bottom was sagging out.

“Alright,” Henry said, grandly, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. Adam cautiously navigated past him, edging over to the drinks table. He set the box down on the table with an audible thunk, and nodded at Gansey and Ronan without acknowledging their joined hands, how close they were standing. 

Henry was still grandstanding at the foot of the stairs; the other partygoers were paying attention to him. Something he said got a laugh, and he was smiling as he pushed his sunglasses back up into his hair. He headed towards his housemates, and set the beers down on the felt surface. Gansey heard him call something about Rutherford and breaking the table, but he wasn’t really paying attention to Henry. Ronan was standing very close to him. Gansey wished he were closer.

Adam was pouring himself some soda. Gansey watched him instead.  

“Y’want some?” Adam asked, and it took Gansey a moment to realize Adam must be talking to him. 

“Yes, please,” Gansey said, a little too fervent, and then, “Um.” He wanted some rum in his coke, and briefly searched the drinks table. Adam slid him a cup. Ronan leaned in, his chest brushing Gansey’s shoulder, and seized a long-necked bottle of something amber-colored. He let go of Gansey’s hand to unscrew the bottle, and Gansey put his hand on Ronan’s hip. 

Liquid sloshed over the table; Ronan had knocked over Gansey’s cup trying to pour. He swore, and wadded up a paper towel to wipe up the spill. 

Adam picked up Gansey’s cup and poured him some more cola, and then a dash of rum. Smirking, Adam handed Gansey his cup. Not sure if he was nervous or defiant, Gansey left his hand on Ronan’s hip as he took it. 

He took a sip. It tasted more like coke than rum, which was for the best, considering. He couldn’t bear to look at Ronan’s face — Ronan was still swearing as he moved around the sodden paper towel. Adam was smirking. Gansey looked past him, and spotted Henry coming towards them. He had lost his sunglasses, and his sweater was now tied around his waist. His shirt was covered in uneven black and white vertical stripes; it made him look like a demented referee. Somehow, inexplicably, there was a streak of blue glitter over one cheekbone, and his hair was sparkling. He was still holding his drink. His expression filled Gansey with creeping dread. 

Gansey looked at Henry’s drink more closely; he couldn’t imagine Henry Cheng drinking canned beer. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be something sparkling, alcoholic, and pomegranate flavored.

Ronan stopped nudging the sodden paper towel across the card table’s surface. He wiped his hand off on his thigh and then settled his palm over Gansey’s ribs. 

Gansey’s breath caught in his throat, and he couldn’t help blinking up at Ronan’s face. Ronan wasn’t looking at him; his glower was fixed on Henry. 

Gansey heard Adam scoff behind them, but when he turned back to glance at him, Adam was hiding his face in the brim of his cup. 

“Hello, boys,” Henry said. He was smiling. He set his can down on the drink table, arm separating Gansey and Ronan from Adam. 

Gansey frowned at him. Adam had turned away from them when Henry arrived; he was still holding his cup to his face, but he was slouched against the table and facing out at the rest of the party. 

“Hello,” Gansey ventured as a reply. It didn’t seem likely that Henry had gotten so drunk in the last few minutes to have forgotten he’d just greeted them at the door. 

“Lynch,” he said, ignoring Gansey completely. “Did you wonder at all why everyone else let you stake out the drinks table, you budding alcoholic, you?” 

Gansey felt himself bristle, but something about Henry’s delighted tone left him wary. He looked back up at Ronan, who looked mutinous. Gansey tugged at Ronan’s belt loop, and was nearly overwhelmed by the immediate intensity of Ronan’s look at him. He’d just meant it as a brief distraction —  _ hey, I’m here _ — but he couldn’t look away from Ronan.

“Are they always like this?” Henry asked, voice still light. 

“Worse,” Adam said, sounding bored. Gansey blinked, and managed to drag his gaze away from Ronan’s long enough to look at Henry.

“What?” he said. 

“It’s a Christmas party,” Henry said. “I decorated in the quaint tradition of your people, Gansey-man. Look up.” 

It took Gansey a moment to parse that. By the time he looked up, Adam had barked out the sort of surprised laugh Gansey would have worked months for, and Ronan had gone still but not yet started swearing. Gansey knew it was going to be bad, and his stomach was already sinking when he looked up to see the mistletoe he knew must be hanging above his head. 

His laugh was still in his voice, but Adam said, “C’mon, Cheng, lay off.” 

Gansey was so briefly and profoundly grateful for Adam’s loyalty that he lost his head and heard himself saying, “No, it’s alright,” with absolutely no input from his brain. He shut his mouth sharply, but he could see Adam’s eyebrows disappearing into his shaggy hair. “Not a big deal,” Gansey continued, desperately.

Ronan said, “Gansey,” into his ear, voice low and urgent, and Gansey shut his mouth to hold his breath for a heartbeat. Henry was standing too close to him; it made Gansey a little nervous. Standing this close to Ronan made Gansey nervous, but that was the kind of nervousness that was wholly preoccupied by the warmth of Ronan’s thigh against his. 

Henry’s grin was at this point more of a leer. Breezily, he said, “This is a safe space, Parrish. If not now, when?” 

Adam picked Henry’s can off the table and slid past Henry’s arm so his shoulder nearly brushed Gansey’s. Henry took a step back. “You’re blocking the drinks table,” Adam said. 

Gansey was impressed. That sounded like the sound of inane and catty remark Helen might direct at someone making a scene at a function she’d planned, the sort that didn’t come naturally to Gansey. 

“Wow,” Henry said. “Calm down, you weirdos. It was a joke. Just stop making eyes at each other by the drinks table, you're hogging the booze.” 

“He said fuck off,” Ronan said. His hand had slipped from Gansey’s ribs down to his hip, and he his hand was digging hard against Gansey’s belt.

“None of you are any fun,” Henry said. His false dismay didn’t dim his smile. Henry reached forward and plucked the cup out of Gansey’s unresisting hand. Gansey blinked. He hadn’t been finished with that; it was still mostly full. 

“You too,” Henry said to Adam, who was still holding his cup up to his mouth. “Hand it over.” 

“What the fuck was that for?” Ronan demanded. 

“It’s  _ my  _ drinks table. If I could take back the ones  _ you  _ already had, I would,” Henry said. “You break mistletoe law, you don’t get to drink at my party.” 

“Adam didn’t break any,” Gansey protested, and then shut his mouth hurriedly as they all looked at him, before he found himself saying the words  _ mistletoe laws _ out loud. Why had he thought this party was a good idea?

“He’s an accessory,” Henry said, decisively. “After the fact.” 

Adam let Henry take the cup from him. “It’s just Cola,” he said. 

Henry frowned at Adam, mock-stern. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he said. “Since when are  _ you  _ the bodyguard, here?” 

Adam laughed again, but it came out an uglier sound, not the same bright peal. Gansey was desperately uncomfortable. He didn’t understand why Adam was laughing at Henry’s jokes. Gansey didn’t think they were particularly funny. 

Adam nudged his shoulder against Gansey’s, half-leaned against his side. “That’s me,” he said at last, in that quiet, wry way he sometimes had. “The protective type.” 

Gansey leaned his shoulder back against Adam’s. Henry scoffed, still holding their two drinks, one in each hand. He poured one cup into the other, and stacked them, and then took his can of spiked seltzer off the table and poured that in, too.  

“Well, whatever,” Henry said. He handed the empty can to Gansey, who took it, bewildered. “No drinks for mistletoe outlaws. You’d better play some of the other games or I’m kicking you out and not inviting you back.” He took a sip of his new drink, and then immediately a second, longer sip. “Nice,” he said, and then, to Gansey, “Recycle that can, Ganseyboy, if you would be so kind. Mother Earth thanks you.” 

The three of them stood there in silence for a few moments. 

“I hope that drink was full of backwash,” Ronan finally said, venomous. He didn’t sound like he was about to go tearing after Henry to overturn said drink onto him, though, so Gansey rubbed Ronan’s hipbone with his thumb. His fingertip dipped under Ronan’s henley and brushed bare skin.

Ronan made a very gratifying noise. Adam huffed an amused  — annoyed?  — breath and patted Gansey’s bicep before leaning away from him and half-stepping away from the table. 

“Let’s get away from that,” Adam said, rolling his eyes at the mistletoe, “before he comes back and tells me to kiss one of you.” 

He moved away from the table, and tipped his head towards them. The lighting made Adam’s face look uncanny and shadowed, all angles and planes. “You two gonna just stand there all night, or are you gonna have some fun?”

He didn't wait for them to answer, just turned and melted into the clump of boys arguing by the pool table. 

With a shock, Gansey noticed two guys — someone he faintly recognized as head of Model UN, someone in his chemistry class — making out in one of the armchairs scattered around the basement. He looked away, mortified, and afraid to look anywhere else in case they weren't the only ones. 

“Relax,” Ronan said softly, with a gentle hand on Gansey's back, and then noticed the same guys Gansey had. 

He raised his voice, definitely loud enough that he'd be heard, and said in tones of great disgust: “In _public_? Jesus Christ, have some goddamn self-respect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks especially to izzy for reading over this chapter for me & also to june for kind enthusiasm / having the best trc fashion takes. 
> 
> find me on [tumblr](http://spikenards.tumblr.com)!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to varied beta readers for helping out even During The Holidays they're the real mvps.  
> fic title from [the song of the same title](https://pitysex.bandcamp.com/album/white-hot-moon) by pity sex.  
> i'm on tumblr; if you liked this fic, consider [reblogging it](http://spikenards.tumblr.com/post/169161863304/)!


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